


Be Happy

by Feech



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Break-up No make-up, Christmas, Damon's mother was sweet and loving, F/M, Jeremy seems to have his canonical ability to speak with the dead, Masquerade Ball, No Getting Back Together, Past Canonical Non-Con (Andie/Damon), Vampires, Violence, chosen family, minor self-harm, removing splinters from underneath fingernails, vampire mind control, vampires have the traditional counting compulsion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:40:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24168973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feech/pseuds/Feech
Summary: Damon breaks up with Elena. She begs him to tell her why. Damon would like to know the answer to that, himself.
Relationships: Damon Salvatore / Elena Gilbert, Jeremy Gilbert and Damon Salvatore, past Damon Salvatore / Andie Starr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	1. Black and White Creepers

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place during Jeremy's senior year of high school. The timeline is somewhat condensed versus canon.
> 
> Thank you to my sister artaban for her helpful beta-read!
> 
> I edited a public domain illustration plate by John J. Audubon for the art. The original may be downloaded here: [Birds of America](https://www.audubon.org/birds-of-america/alphabetical)
> 
> ********

********

Elena ran up to the front door of the Salvatore house. Damon opened it before she reached it. She skipped up the last two porch steps and dropped her bag, Damon picked her up, she wrapped her legs around his waist, and they kissed. He made a demonstrative sound, trying to say hello against her lips. She gave him several fast, noisy kisses on his cheeks, and one more on his lips. He set her down and beamed at her. She put an arm around his waist, Damon put an arm around her shoulder, and they strolled into the kitchen.

Elena smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling. "I saw the curtain move when I pulled up," she said. "You watch at the window for me every time I come. Can't you hear my car from inside the house?"

"Of course I can."

"You don't need to watch for me. How long do you sit there?"

Damon shrugged one shoulder. "Couple of hours."

Elena gave a light, brief laugh. "You need a hobby. Or a job."

"I have a job. Today I hired myself to pick ticks off a deer."

"What? No, you didn't. You didn't—did you?" Elena gave him a skeptical head-tilt, complete with a small curl of her lip.

"I went out walking—proof that I do have hobbies, I went walking in the woods—"

"Don't tell me this is leading to you actually taking ticks off a wild animal."

"I went walking in the woods," Damon persisted, "and there was this little spike buck, and his face and all over behind his ears was covered in ticks."

Elena giggled. "Ew."

"I caught him. Held him down and picked ticks. All off of his face, and the backs of his ears. Some around his antlers, too. He was not happy—but when I let him go, he kind of did this little shiver—a little dance—like this—" Damon wiggled and Elena laughed "—and I could tell that he was surprised. That he felt better."

"Well, it was nice of you to help the poor thing." Elena sniffed the air. "Changing off that appetizing subject: What's for dinner? Is that roast beef?"

"Venison," said Damon.

Elena laughed; it started as a short and sarcastic sound, but turned into one of real amusement. Damon's straight face broke and he smiled. "It's a beef rump roast. I made some bread, too. Dinner will keep, depending on if you want some now or would rather go and find a nice neck or two. We could always just eat the beef as sandwiches later."

He had prepared a bowl of red and green grapes; Elena popped one into her mouth and asked around it as she rolled it on her tongue, "Do you want to go out?"

"We could go dancing—I want to. But we have to make love first."

Elena smirked and draped her wrists over his shoulders. "We have to?"

Damon gripped fistfuls of her blouse and pulled her roughly against him. "I can't get enough of you."

Elena played with his shirt collar. "There's nothing wrong with making love now, and again when we get home. The slow way, the second time. Maybe I should shower first, though."

"Not now. Afterward." Damon lifted her and she put her thighs around his hips, and he carried her to the stairs.

********

They went out of town to go dancing. During the drive in the convertible, Damon said, "I love this. I love going out with you."

Elena sounded amused. "We're not even at the roadhouse yet."

"I'm anticipating. I go out dancing frequently, to have supper, of course, or for a midnight snack. It's easy to take some person into the entryway or the cloakroom for a little nip. But I prefer to go dancing with somebody who knows me. Someone who's there on purpose to be with me. And then we can share the person in the cloakroom. Sharing is fun, and television programming for children assures me that it's also morally upright."

"You're chipper tonight," said Elena.

"You sound mystified. Why? Shouldn't I be excited? You're here."

Elena reached over and smoothed her palm down over his knee. "I'm excited, too. And I'm glad that you're happy."

The roadhouse was fairly packed, but there was room on the dance floor for twisting in place, which Damon did, or for jumping up and down, which seemed to be Elena's preferred method of dancing. Her grin was carefree, and her movement showed off her long hair to its best advantage. Damon was aware that the way he danced was showing off; he was always thinking of how he looked to other people. He knew that anyone looking at him could appreciate his calculatedly handsome appearance and sexy moves, but if they watched him for a while they could also tell that he was thinking about it all the time; that he was counting on a specific reaction. Elena only looked like she was having fun.

Elena pointed out someone she knew, a tall, loose-limbed guy with a lot of long, thin dreadlocks. She introduced Damon to Kason, had a couple of dances with the guy while Damon watched indulgently from the bar. Elena bounced around, more or less with the beat, and conversed with her partner; she leaned close to Kason, and because he was so tall he had to lean forward so she could yell into his ear. She knew that if Damon tuned in he could hear what she said even over the music, and occasionally she turned a glance to Damon to show that she knew it. She waved at Damon and he gave her a little wave back, and nodded to Kason. Damon wondered idly how the guy tasted, but Elena got touchy about sharing drinks of people she knew, so he wouldn't be bringing that up.

Elena wound through the crowd to the bar where Damon was sitting. On the way, she declined offers to dance. When she reached him, Damon said, "You don't have to stop after two dances with that guy, just to be polite to me. Dance with other people. You know I don't mind."

"But I'm only here to be with you." She leaned against the bar next to him for a second, but wouldn't sit down, and pulled Damon back out onto the dance floor.

Damon couldn't quell something uncomfortable and twisty in his gut, and at first he couldn't explain it to himself. It wasn't bloodlust. He didn't want to cut out and chase anyone down; he was perfectly content to behave himself like a gentleman. But his stomach wanted to close on a pit of emptiness, and his heart ached. It didn't affect his dancing, but Elena looked into his eyes and asked, "Are you okay? Aren't you having fun?"

He gave her a small, reassuring smile. "I'm having fun."

"'Cause if you're not having fun, we could go home."

His stomach tightened more, like a warning. "I don't want to go home. I want to stay here."

"All right."

After that, the feeling lightened. Damon felt for it in the back of his mind, and then he recognized it—it was the feeling of the years without Katherine, while he waited for the time when he could wake her and bring her back to him. During all those years, fits of this lonesome dread had come upon him. He squeezed Elena's hand more tightly, and she gripped back, but the loneliness came back. This was not a time to feel this way, when Elena was with him, touching him, in love with him.

"I feel—" he said, about to voice the emotion out loud for Elena, and she nodded to him, eyebrows raised, waiting, but he didn't want to say, _I'm lonely_ , not when Elena was here with him for a brief weekend.

"What is it?" she asked, and he told her in spite of his resolution.

"It's nothing. I just feel a little lonely. It means nothing."

"Too crowded here? Need to go somewhere quieter?"

Damon felt as if some shadowy creature stuck a paw in his stomach, made a fist with its claws and stole something away. "No, no, I want to stay here." The loneliness lightened again.

They stayed in the club for over an hour more. By the time they got into his car the feeling was gone.

********

On the way home, Damon said, "I could pick you up at college some night—make it a weeknight if those are easier—and we can go dancing. As long as I don't have to spend the night on the Whitmore campus, or too close to it."

"We can go dancing when I visit here," said Elena.

"But I want to do it more."

"How about tomorrow?"

Damon objected. "Tomorrow night is your last night here."

"So?"

"So I wanted to find time to look out of the window with you."

"Look out of what window? At what?"

"At nothing. The backyard. Out the back parlor window. There's a birdbath out there. If we put some water in it, or it rains, something might use it, and then there would be birds to watch."

"Not at night," Elena pointed out. "But if you must look out of the window, I'd be glad to look out of the window with you. And if we get bored, I'm sure there's other things we can think of to do." She walked her fingertips along Damon's upper leg and softly pressed his thigh.

"Window-gazing for tomorrow night, then."

Elena said, "And in the afternoon I should go by Tyler's and say hello to Jeremy." Jeremy Gilbert lived at Tyler Lockwood's home. Matt Donovan lived there, too, as the official owner of the house since Tyler had been rendered half-undead.

"You don't sound enthusiastic," said Damon.

"He'll think I'm only there to yell at him about school."

"I only yell at him about school, and he loves it when I go to see him."

Elena giggled.

Damon said, offended, "You think I'm joking."

"What did you bribe him with?"

"Furniture."

"Furniture?" Elena giggled again.

"Everything I say tonight is funny."

"Poor Damon. Nobody takes him seriously."

" _You_ don't take me seriously. I bribed Little Gilbert with furniture. Very nice furniture."

Elena thought that over. "He does like furniture.”

"Yes. Yes, he does. He was complaining about how he'd never have a house to put anything in, because he's planning to travel the country as a hunter. I'm not clear on exactly what his plans are, and I don't care much as long as he doesn't fall in with the wrong set of stabby people. But I said he could have the furniture without the house."

"Where'd you get the furniture?"

"My summer house," said Damon. "It's crammed with priceless antiques. Things I haven't refinished yet. Jeremy didn't know that, so I told him about it, which means effectively I gave him the furniture, and he thanks me by showing me his homework. He comes by every week, lets me have his homework, picks up a piece from the summer house and hauls it over to Tyler's ten-car garage and repairs and refinishes to his little antique-loving heart's content."

"Jer never said anything about this to me. I didn't know you were bribing him to finish high school. That's not a good idea."

"It's a great idea," said Damon. "Side benefit, this pisses off Tyler, because most of the pieces used to belong to Gilberts, not Lockwoods—I have provenances for everything—or I just remember—and it's really good stuff. Tyler wants to know what else I'm holding back, if I have any Lockwood things, and I hinted that I might. And Jeremy's seen a Hoosier cupboard with a flour sifter in my pile of stuff. But we're not telling. We're going to paint it white and give it to Tyler for Christmas. We'll throw in some antique mixing bowls."

"Never mind the antiques. You check Jeremy's homework?"

"I need to. He figured out how to show up in class and still fail, so I demanded to see his coursework. He shoves it in my face, like it's some kind of an insult, but I read it over, making sure all the little blanks are filled in, or I read his papers. He's failing slightly less under this system."

Elena gave a _hmph_ of disapproval. "He's a senior in high school. He needs to learn how to handle this stuff on his own. But it's good that he's not failing. I want him to be happy."

"I don't care whether or not he's happy," said Damon. "I want him to graduate."

The next afternoon, Elena went to Tyler's for a couple of hours to spend time with Jeremy.

That night, Damon and Elena brought their drinks out on the back porch. Elena had Cabernet, Damon had his best bourbon. They sat in wooden kitchen chairs. "This paint is peeling," Damon remarked. "I ought to have Jeremy do something about these chairs."

The back lawn was ringed with a half-circle of black cherry trees. An empty concrete bird bath rested in the middle of a big semicircle of thin, hairlike, grasses that had gone to seed and begun to dry, and shone silver and tan in the moonlight.

Damon and Elena sat quietly as fog accumulated, turning the clear night to a cataracted view; the cherry trees slowly blurred, made thinner and narrower by the fog so that only the middles of their trunks were visible. Instead of receding, their dark lines seemed to loom over the yard, as if they wanted to lean all the way to the house.

Elena spoke, a note of teasing in her voice. "Even vampires can't see through fog."

Damon turned lazily toward her. He intertwined their fingers loosely and gave her a sleepy smile. "I don't need to be able to see past the porch. I'm satisfied with the view right here."

Elena crinkled up the corners of her eyes and gave him a small smile.

"Don't you think it's a nice view?" asked Damon. "I like to think I'm easy on the eyes."

Elena laughed. "You are. You know I think you are."

Damon tugged her fingers and asked, "Why can't you come home every weekend?"

Elena's nails tickled the undersides of Damon's fingers. "We could live off-campus," she said.

"This is off-campus."

"You know what I mean. There are some really nice houses for rent, you could be _closer_." Her voice went sing-songy on that word, _closer_.

"I miss you." The words were squeezed out of his chest. It was easier to say them over the phone, when Elena couldn't see his face. Saying it aloud with her there felt even more raw than telling her that he loved her—more vulnerable.

"I miss you, too," said Elena. "You could come and see me sometimes."

Damon furrowed his brow. "I do come and see you."

"But you barely stay a few hours. I could nicely ask Bonnie and Caroline to leave us the room, but you never want to come up for long."

"I don't want to make love on Horror Campus. I can't let my guard down. It doesn't do justice to your beauty to have one ear on the hallway and the window at all times. Besides, I don't like to stay long enough to feed from the people there. You never know when the gentlemen of the faculty will take a notion to spike the students' blood."

Elena said, "I'm not afraid. I eat there all the time."

"And I worry about you."

"It's not like you to worry."

"There are plenty of colleges to choose from. Why do you and Caroline insist on attending the Whitmore College of Vampire-Eyeball-Peeling? I can understand why Bonnie goes there. She'd probably participate with Augustine if she knew the secret password."

Elena grinned and batted his knee. "Don't be mean."

"The whole college is steeped in the tradition of slicing up vampire organs. Sometimes the vampires, and I speak from experience, are subjected to lectures on how traditional it is."

Elena leaned over and stroked Damon's temple. "That happened a long time ago. I'm sorry they did that to you, but it was ages ago."

"The head torture doctor—the one who had the most to do with me—founded the damned college."

"One professor does not constitute an entire college."

"One is more than enough for me. Besides, you don't know how many professional—and hobbyist—vampire-torturers there are. They attract each other. They congregate. Like ants at a sadistic picnic."

"I think that's a little melodramatic."

Damon took firm hold of Elena's fingers, curving and tensing his own with hers. "Bring your homework here with you. I can look out of the window or read or listen to music, and you can do your work near me in the parlor. Or we'll leave the door to the dining room open and you can work in there. There are plenty of lamps."

Elena wrinkled her nose at him. "I can't afford to be distracted."

"I'll be good. I won't distract you."

"You can't help it. You always distract me."

He caught up her hand and kissed her knuckles. "I won't bother you. I'll cuddle you while you work."

"You mean you'll distract me."

"No, I'll be your lap-Damon. I will relieve stress."

"You can't literally sit in my lap while I'm studying."

"I could give you a backrub while you're studying."

"Damon, I cannot be expected to ignore that."

"It wouldn't be foreplay."

"At first."

"You're the one who wants it to be foreplay. I want to—to touch you."

"Such a cuddler," said Elena, and she gave him a soft chuck on the chin.

********

The next time Elena came to see him, a few weeks later, Damon didn't watch for her at a window. He heard her drive up, walk up the steps onto the porch and tentatively try the door. When she found it unlocked, she pushed it open. "Damon?"

"I'm in the back parlor."

He was kneeling on the couch, with his chin on the backs of his hands, watching the backyard.

Elena came in and teased, "Why don't you turn the couch toward the window?"

Damon slid sideways and looked over his shoulder to greet her. "Because that's not how you set up a parlor." He drew her down next to him and resumed his earlier position. "Why don't you come every weekend?"

"I just got here! You ask me that every time. I don't mind, I realize it's an expression of affection. Anyway, you know I can't do that, my schedule's crammed." Elena put her arms around Damon's neck and nuzzled his cheek. "I wish you could be on campus for the social side of things—some of what I'm busy with is doing things with friends when we get five minutes to be together. If you were there it'd be perfect."

"Perfect means ideal which means it's not the word to use to describe Whitmore."

She let the topic drop. "What have you been up to? Done anything exciting today besides sit backwards?"

"I put some mums by your aunt Jenna's stone."

"Aww. That was sweet of you."

"I was there anyway, visiting Andie's stone. I brought her yellow mums, and Jenna's were dark red. Very beautiful."

"Thank you."

"Want to go down and see them?"

"I don't know. Maybe if I do something really fun to balance it out."

Damon half-smiled. "All right. What would you like to do? There's a big band at the American Legion."

Elena arched her back and stretched her arms. "That sounds fun. We should get up a crowd so it's not just us."

Damon narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. "I wonder if Tyler would go."

Elena asked, "Do you go to Tyler's house much other than to check on Jeremy?"

"Sometimes when Matt is out tending bar I go. He doesn't care much for me visiting, but that doesn't matter since he invited me in one time. I can walk in whenever I want to whether he likes it or not. It feels strange . . . the house is so empty since Mrs. Lockwood was killed. And—I forgot to get her any mums. Just a minute. I'll text Tyler and find out if he personally takes care of his mother's grave." Damon fished his phone out of his pocket, turned around and sat on the couch cushion. "Anyway, even if Jeremy is out I stay with Tyler and we yell at each other for a few hours. It's nice."

Elena, amused, said, "Maybe one day you could try actual friendship."

"Pretty sure Tyler thinks yelling at people is friendship." Damon texted him: "Mums for your mother?"

In a moment Tyler replied, "Yellow or white."

"Your mother wouldn't want purple?"

"Purple mums?"

Damon found a picture on the Internet and sent it.

Tyler responded, "Those are pretty. Get those plus yellow and white."

Damon spoke to Elena as he typed a reply. "I'll tell him I'll buy them next week. Or if you want to go shopping with me, you and I could go together this weekend."

Elena didn't answer him directly. She leaned and pressed her upper arm against his and said in a distant tone, "Poor Tyler. This town is so full of loss and death. He should get out of it. I wonder why he didn't come to college."

"I think he likes it here," said Damon. "Also, eyeball-peeling. It's impossible to stress that point enough."

Elena jumped up and grabbed her purse. "I have something to show you." She brought out her phone. "Here."

Damon glanced at the photo of a large, old two-story house. "It's too white."

Elena gave him a wide, naughty grin. "That one's a decoy." She scrolled down. "Look at this. Big, brown house. Thirty-four and a half miles off campus. It's for rent. We'll go antiquing—Jeremy can help us, or should we just shop your summer house? We'll get some furniture and some of those deep, wide, extremely old picture frames you like, the ones that swallow the painting. Go to a Starving Artists' sale at Whitmore, you'll be right at home."

Damon looked a long time at the photo. "I can't. I have to be at least thirty-five miles away from Augustine's center of operations to be able to sleep with both eyes closed."

"That's strangely specific." Elena smiled. "I'll find another house. Or you come out and help me look."

"When you graduate, when you get a job, we can move in together."

"Of course. But I don't think we should be waiting for that kind of happiness."

Damon opened his mouth, but Elena spoke before he could get a word out. "Oh, I don't mean we need to take the rental if you don't want to," she amended hastily. "I just mean we need to be happy in the moment we're in."

Damon kneaded his thighs and worked his jaw. "I have to stay here until Jeremy finishes high school."

"You could live in the rental house with me and go to see him on the weekends—except when you and I go dancing."

Damon said, "I want to go dancing with you more often. But Jeremy needs to know that I'm in Mystic Falls. I stop in at the high school in the middle of the week sometimes to make sure he's in class. If he knew it'd take me a long time to get there, he'd start finding out where I am and he would evade me. I dislike being evaded."

Elena pulled her hair back as if she were going to make a ponytail, twisted the end around her fingertips, dropped it and shook it out. "I still say Jeremy's going to have to learn how to take care of himself sometime."

"He is learning," Damon insisted. "When he knows I'm watching, he learns things other than how to avoid scrutiny. I know all his hiding places and I can get to them before he knows I'm there. And he knows that I know it."

"Thank you. For keeping an eye on Jeremy. Even though I think it's time he dealt with this stuff himself, It's good that you've been here in Mystic Falls while he's still here. I had to get out for my own mental health. And as soon as he graduates, we'll all be free of high school, you included."

Damon said, "As soon as he graduates, he's going to leave town."

"That's what I said."

"No. I mean, this is our last year to have him staying in one place, where we can talk sense into him."

Elena gave a brief, dry laugh. "Nobody can talk sense into Jeremy that Jeremy doesn't want to hear. When he leaves, at least he'll be happy."

"He's going to be out staking people—monsters like you and me. This is our last chance to guide him to use his inherent stabbiness for good."

"I'm sure he will. He'll be fine. Jeremy's a good person," said Elena.

Damon was quiet for a time. He took Elena's hand and cupped her knuckles in his palm. "After Jeremy graduates, and you're still in that terrible college, I'll be all alone."

"Cheer up." Elena kissed him on the corner of his mouth. "Come up to the bedroom with me and for the next few hours I'll make sure you're as far from alone as you can get."

********

Later that night, Damon and Elena went to the big band dance at the American Legion post. Tyler went along, dressed in vintage-cut trousers, suspenders, a tie, and a shirt with a buttoned-on collar. 

Damon had some of those around, and wished he'd thought of wearing one. "Where did a damn nineteen-year-old get shirts with separate collars?"

Tyler answered, "I looked for them, found a person who had some, and paid money to get a few for myself. It's called shopping. You might not have heard of it, it's new within the last century."

Tyler was an excellent dancer. Damon felt disgruntled; moving one's body to attract attention was his thing. But Tyler didn't seem to be doing it for attention—he was doing it right, for the purpose of doing it well. It was hard to tell whether Tyler enjoyed it for its own sake, or if he was dancing well for some higher purpose. Damon asked him to jitterbug with him once, and still couldn't figure out whether Tyler was enjoying himself, though he bowed and thanked Damon for the dance.

The band was good, and Damon found himself enjoying the night for the nice time it was. He thought he should do stuff like this more often—local stuff—when Elena was away.

Elena waltzed once with Tyler. Damon listened to them; it was inconceivable that Elena wouldn't ask Tyler whether he was having fun. Sure enough, she smiled at him and asked him, "Having fun?" 

Tyler didn't answer. All he did was make a small sound and tilt his head, which could have meant anything. At the end of the night he thanked them both, in rather short tones, for asking him to come along.

The next evening, Damon again knelt on the couch in the Salvatore back parlor, facing the backyard. He rested his arms on the back of the couch and his chin on his hands. Elena sat beside him. The pale sun was behind the cherry trees. It looked like there wouldn't be a real sundown that night, only a greying of the light, and then gloom. It had rained, and a little songbird was inspecting the birdbath and dipping its face and crop.

Elena reached back over her shoulder and tapped his elbow. "What are you thinking about?"

"I was thinking about someone. Thinking about my mother."

"What about her?"

Damon turned his head to look at Elena. "She used to keep birds. She had these little—" he illustrated with his finger and thumb how little they were "—creepers. Black and white creepers. She hand-raised a clutch of them. Six of them. They lived in two cages made out of wire—very fancy, lots of scrollwork."

Elena angled herself toward him and leaned her cheek on her hand on the back of the couch. Damon continued, "The bird room was white, with white lace curtains that had a flowered pattern. When the bird cages were open the curtains were always closed, so the birds wouldn't accidentally fly against the glass. They would fly across the room at about knee height, from one piece of furniture to another, and when they landed, they creeped. Crept. Up and down, like nuthatches.”

"Which room was the bird room?"

"It's my bedroom now. Mother would sit in there on her sofa—it was white with blue embroidery. She would read or do her fancy work. On the day I'm thinking of, she was doing a cross-stitch for a friend of hers. It said, 'Our God is a God of Peace'."

"There's a cross-stitch like that in your bedroom! Did your mother do more than one? Did she make that one?"

"She made that one. It's the one she made as a gift. I got it back from the friend's estate, many years later. While Mother was working on the cross-stitch, the creepers crept sidewise along the sofa in little hops, peering into the cracks between the cushions. She would watch them and talk to them, and then she'd say, 'Go back in your cages,' and most of them would go. A few always stayed out, and then she asked me, 'Damon, would you?'

"They flitted over to the curtains and crept up and down and side to side, watching for me to come and catch them. I stood over them and they always tilted their little heads and looked me in the eye, and it was as if they were saying, 'It's this fellow again.'"

"Would they sit on your finger?" asked Elena.

"They wouldn't usually sit on my finger, only on Mother's. I had to slowly close my fingers over them and hold them lightly, so they couldn't slip out and fly away, but you have to be very, very careful of their little chests. You circle your finger and thumb, like so, so their heads can fit through, but there's plenty of room in your palm for their chests. Then I could open the doors on the cages with my thumbs while I had a creeper in each hand.

"Now, Stefan had a little black cat with a white face. Somebody let it in while I was still catching birds, and I saw it come strolling in. I swore. All of a sudden, Father stood in the doorway. 'Damon! What kind of language is that to use in the house?' He often encouraged us to swear manly swears out-of-doors and in the barns, but I never did. Stefan swore skilfully and often."

Elena interrupted. "He did not."

"Ask him. He'll show you. Give him time to get warmed up."

"I don't think I've ever heard him swear. Do you remember what you said?"

"Of course I do."

"Repeat it."

"No."

Elena started in on him with her appealing expression, but Damon ended the topic with one stern shake of his head. Elena said, "Well then, tell me what happened next."

"I couldn't clench my fists. What I wanted to do, when I had just been chastised by my father for swearing—and it was for the first time ever in front of Mother—what I wanted to do was clench my fists until Father went away, then settle down and ask pardon from my mother. But I couldn't. The birds were in my hands, I would have killed them if I'd put tension in my fists. Instead I kept up a torrent of curses, under my breath. I had to be quiet, because one of the other black and white creepers had landed on my shoulder.

"I opened the cage and placed the two in my hands inside. Cupped my hand slowly over the one on my shoulder and caught him. Then I closed the cage. Counted. All the birds were in the cages; the cat could do whatever it wanted. So I stalked out of the room, swearing at the top of my voice. I followed my father, still swearing. He had gone down the hall and disappeared into his study. I shoved open the door to his office. 'Damon,' he said. 'You are not to enter my study without knocking and receiving permission to enter. As for your language, you are not fit to be in the house. Go outdoors, and don't bother to come back in for either dinner or supper.'"

Elena made a sympathetic sound. Damon told her, "The calling me unfit to be indoors stung a little, but it was a disgustingly mild punishment, not at all what I was looking for."

"You wanted to be punished? What kind of punishment did you think you actually wanted?"

"A good whipping. I deserved at least that much. But all he did was dismiss me."

Elena said, "Well, I'm not going to say I'm sorry your father didn't whip you. That's awful."

"It was only while I was walking around outside by myself that it dawned on me that Mother had heard almost all of my curse words, and I hadn't even gone back and begged her pardon. When supper was safely over I went to see her. I fell apart and cried in her lap, something else my father would have been disgusted with me over, it was such a girlish thing to do—at least over such a small thing. Mother said, 'We should be happy.'

"I said, 'I don't see why.'

"She said, 'We should be happy that I don't keep a parrot.' That made me laugh, which was unfair."

Elena said gently, "It was only some bad words, Damon."

"No. It would have been, if I'd sworn at the cat and realized my mistake and begged my mother's pardon like a gentleman. But I—I forgot she was there. Because of Father. I was trying to impress him. To make him angry with me. I had never used any rough language around my mother. I would have liked to believe she didn't think I had it in me."

"She was your mother, she would understand. I'm sure she would forgive you."

"Of course she would. She did. She always did."

They were quiet for a little while. Elena said in a sympathetic tone, "Maybe you shouldn't hold onto these stories."

"Who else is going to hold them?"

"Nobody needs to, Damon. This house . . . maybe it holds the stories all by itself."

"You can't expect me to get to be a good person because of you, and then not feel bad about things I did in the past. I am experiencing regret. I'm not good at it. It hurts."

"Damon." Elena stroked his cheek. "You felt bad anyway, before us. Before we started dating."

"Yes, but I didn't admit it."

"I want you to be here, with me. Not in the past. I want us to be happy. We should be happy. Nobody gets anything out of your regrets. I need us to be together, now, today, not a century and a half ago—longer. Your mother would want you to move on."

Elena stroked Damon's cheek again. Damon slid down into a sitting position and gently lowered her hand. "But I might not want to."

Elena gave her own knee a little slap. "You know what? You need to get out more. This house is full of so many old stories. Let's go make some new ones." She jumped off the couch and held her hand out.

Damon smiled wistfully and took her hand and let her pull him up. "Where are we going?"

"I don't know, you pick. As long as it's something fun and active, not just moving from here to the living room couch and looking into the fire. We can do that later."

Damon said, "How about we literally go out? Outside. Want to run in the woods?"

"Just—run around in the woods?"

"Let's race."

Elena smoothed her hair back over her ear. "What's the goal?"

Damon went to the back hall and opened the door. "Get to the creek and back. You have to get your sleeve wet in the creek to prove you were there, and be first to touch the front door. See you." Damon darted off before Elena could ask any more questions or even know that they were starting.

The straightest shot to the creek wasn't exactly straight—you had to wind back and forth among a line of tall, straight young ash trees almost all the way there. Damon abandoned this row of trees. He knew a big fallen log all covered in moss, and saw no point in running through the woods at night without taking the opportunity to jump over it.

On the way, something shone in the darkness and caught his interest. Up a gnarled tree, above a twisty branch, a pair of pale golden discs glinted in the dark. When Damon had been a human boy, running around in these woods at night, he had sometimes seen such glowing eyes. Now he could clearly make out the entire bobcat. "I see you," he said to it as it crouched, watching and waiting for him to pass. "I can see you as well as you can see me. Maybe better. Can you see in the dark as well as I can?"

The bobcat blinked, slowly turned his face away as if Damon bored him.

"Well, I've got a race against my girlfriend to run, so, see you around." Damon made his way to the creek and bent and dipped his cuff in the chilly water. He raced back along the line of ash trees and around to the front of the house.

Elena waited for him on the porch. She greeted him with, "I expected you on my heels the whole way."

Damon said, "I wasn't really trying."

Elena gave him a skeptical smile. He smiled back at her and said, "Admit it, you've been sitting on the porch the whole time."

Elena brandished her wrist. "Sleeve wet with genuine creek water. And my boot topper picked up a burr. That didn't happen sitting on a porch. Where have you been?"

"I went the fun way. I wanted to have fun."

"And did you? Have fun?"

Damon kissed her, said against her mouth, "Yes."

"Good." Elena took his hands and swung them. "We should have fun. We should be happy." She guided Damon's hands up, laid his wrists across her shoulders, and patted the backs of his hands to indicate that he should leave them there. "Just folding up this wet sleeve so I don't have to feel it. Okay." She took Damon's hands again. "What do you want to do next?"

"I don't know. Macramé? Typewriter repair? We'd have to break a typewriter."

Elena grinned and kissed him.

Damon kissed back, straightened and glanced into the darkness outside of the porch light's glow, paused to listen, and sniffed the air. The night was peaceful, but his insides felt tight. When he had hopped onto the porch after the race, everything had seemed fine. What had happened between that moment and this one, to make him wary and troubled? Damon didn't care what they did next. He was playing for time. "We could learn how to make rosehip jelly. First we have to pick the rosehips. If you don't want to do that, we haven't done a, uh, taxidermy date night before."

Elena smirked, then asked, "Should we have some people over?"

"Friend-people, or dinner-people?"

"I'm not hungry, are you?"

Damon gathered her into a loose hug and collected his thoughts. Sadness crouched at the edges of this hug on the porch, and if he moved, that sadness would sink into his heart. He laid his chin on Elena's hair, so she couldn't see his face. "Want to play checkers?"

"Checkers . . . that we could actually do," she said. "Or, we could go up to your bedroom."

"Good idea. I keep my best checkerboard there."

Elena laughed. She headed for the door, loosely holding hands with Damon, and reached for the door with her free hand. He tackled her, pulled her back, propped her up against the siding outside the half-open door. Elena gave him a bright grin and Damon laughed low and went in for a kiss. The tightness and wariness melted for a few moments. Then melancholy threatened him again.

Damon wanted to get away from the house, but the normal thing to do would be to go inside and be with Elena. His feelings made no sense, so he forced himself to enter the foyer. As soon as they were indoors, Damon had to get out. It wasn't as strong as the emotional pain of being uninvited, but he felt unsafe. He didn't run, he froze, poised to flee.

Elena was crossing the hall and continuing the conversation. "Let's just get cleaned up first—you can come in the shower with me."

Damon stood in the middle of the floor. Elena looked over her shoulder, turned back to him, and asked, "What, no pun on coming in the shower?"

Damon was too panicked to be clever. He glanced away, thinking of what to say, knowing in his gut that he could not tell Elena what he was feeling. His head ached and his stomach was flipping. "Um. My, uh, my stomach feels a little sour." He swallowed, and his throat was sore from the tension of lying to her.

Elena's mood changed and she came over to him and touched his face. "Did you get into some vervain by accident?"

Damon shook his head a little.

Elena tucked back a lock of Damon's bangs. "You must be hungry. We should go out first and have something to eat. Then we can come back and visit your checkerboard." She gave him a gently jostling hug around the waist.

Damon ran her hair over his fingers and thought of taking her upstairs one last time, to have her . . . to have something to keep . . . He said, "I can't."

Elena took his hands. "Hmm? Can't what?"

"No, I can't—" he took his hands out of hers, and when she followed him, he touched her lightly on the breastbone to stop her.

"Damon . . . what?"

Damon said, "It's over."

"What's over?"

Damon couldn't look into her eyes and answer. He looked at the floor and tried to speak; his voice came out rough and he had to cough to clear it. "I'm sorry."

"You mean—you mean us? Are you breaking up with me?"

Damon turned sideways-on to her. "Yes."

Elena let out a frustrated little sigh. "Again? Damon, turn around and look at me."

Damon gave Elena a glance over his shoulder but he felt better with his feet pointing toward the kitchen door. He shuffled a few steps in that direction.

Elena asked, "Why now? What did you do? Whatever it is, you can tell me."

Damon headed toward the kitchen, planning to go through the pantry door that led outside. On his way there he said, over his shoulder, "I haven't done anything." After a moment he added, "Recently."

Elena caught up to him and put her hand on his forearm. "Damon. Whatever you're trying to protect me from, I want to know. I can take it."

"It's—nothing." Damon knew that saying something was nothing made it sound as if it were something. He laid his hand on the back of hers, but had to pull away, or soon he would be kissing her. "I can't explain." He wrenched himself away and strode toward the pantry.

Elena zipped over and blocked the door. "Why are we breaking up?"

"Don't make me explain."

"Have you done something you haven't told me about? Whatever it is, you don't have to break up with me to protect me, or because you think I won't forgive you."

Damon lunged through the pantry. It was the work of a desperate moment to undo the latch, an old one he was fond of and didn't wish to break. Then he was out and down the steps on the lawn, and he could draw a long breath. He ran for his car.

Elena called out after him through the doorway. "What did you do? Just tell me!"

********

Damon peeled out of his drive and went to town. He parked the convertible at the Mystic Grill but didn't go inside. The charcoal-colored clouds had cleared and the sky was midnight blue. Damon considered. Where would he be able to find assembled, helpless humans in the evening? He took a fast and steady walk to the laundromat.

He could see through the large windows that there were a few people inside. There were two glass doors on opposite sides of the laundromat. Damon entered by the nearest one. The stuffy, perfumed air made taking a deep breath unpleasant. He wrinkled his nose.

The person closest to Damon was a man in a tank top loading clothes into a dryer. He glanced up and smiled at Damon. Damon smiled and nodded back. A woman using a washing machine a few feet away glanced at Damon when he came in, but she lowered her eyes and turned away as if determined to keep him out of her peripheral vision and to make no overtures. Stiffly she finished putting quarters in the slots and shoved the receptacle into the machine. 

Damon went to her first. "Excuse me, ma'am."

She looked up, into his eyes, and gave a brief smile. In the moment of the smile Damon said, "Don't move." Surprise registered in her eyes. Damon spun away, immediately made eye contact with the man by the dryer, and told him, "Don't move and don't scream." He pivoted back to the woman in the bathrobe. "You either, no screaming."

A woman in a saggy sweater, near the opposite door, had ducked down behind a line of washers. Damon vaulted a machine and grabbed her arm. She screamed, and Damon said, "Don't yell. Don't move." He said to the laundromat at large, "You may now murmur quietly amongst yourselves, but no screaming."

Damon walked back around the line of washing machines and surveyed his first two victims. "Everyone's dressed in their best Laundry Day fashion selections, I see." He pointed to the man standing by the dryer. "Tank top with a Tweety Bird made entirely out of sequins. Provides disco-ball brightness even under these pathetic fluorescents. And red boxers to go with it. Nice."

He turned to the woman whom he had approached first. "Pink bathrobe and green leotard. Understated. Classy. I like it. It's a shame none of these ensembles will last the night. It's difficult to get blood out of velour." 

Damon took a long, sliding step to get in close to the woman in the bathrobe. Her dark hazel eyes had a gloss of tears, but no tears fell. Damon had told her not to scream and not to move. He had neglected to compel her not to be frightened. Damon stared into her eyes until he found that he was unconsciously giving her a sympathetic touch on her upper arm. His lip twitched in the beginning of a snarl. Tight furrows formed on his brow. He told her, "Don't be afraid."

The hazel eyes widened in a final burst of fear, then showed betrayal and dull fury as Damon took away the last thing in her control. He huffed. "And don't look into my face again unless I tell you to." Despite having just compelled her, he turned around quickly to make sure she would not be able to look at his face. He was breathing hard.

In the bland tone of a compelled person, but with a little puzzlement in her voice, Saggy Sweater Woman, on the other side of the line of machines, spoke. "But you're afraid. What you're doing to us . . . making us calm . . . you can't do it to yourself. You're afraid."

Damon moved fast. He cradled Sweater Woman's jaw in his hands. Breaking necks was easy and felt good. A swishing, flopping sound coming from a full laundry basket on the floor distracted him. Damon kept his hands in place for a neck-breaking and glanced down. The laundry moved. Something dark, shiny, and alive poked its snout above the layers of laundry. Damon asked, "What is that?"

"That's King. My monitor lizard."

"You bring your lizard to the laundromat?"

The checkered green lizard clambered out of the laundry. Counting its tail, the thing was longer than Damon's arm. It had long claws and a pot belly, and wore a black leather dog harness studded with heart-shaped rhinestones. Damon had slid his hands up to the woman's cheeks while he watched the lizard. Now he turned to face her and noticed the white glitter of her small earrings. "Those are nice diamonds. You ought to let King wear diamonds. He saved your life." Damon dropped his hands and spoke up. "Who else here has animals they need to go home unharmed and take care of?"

Tweety Bird Shirt haltingly raised his hand. "I have a canary. It's just him and me since Grandma died."

Damon said flatly, "Canary."

"They're not really my pets," offered Bathrobe, "but I help a Shetland pony breeder train them as therapy animals."

"You all are the worst victims ever."

"You don't have to do this," said Tweety Bird Shirt. "You know, there are people who are actually into getting bitten by vampires."

"It's true," said Hazel Eyes Bathrobe. "It could be a peaceful exchange that makes all involved parties happy."

"Hush, you!" said Damon. "All of you. I have a lot of self-loathing to burn through tonight and you're only my first stop. I'm gonna feed now, you're all going to bleed a lot; King, you might want to avert your eyes. As for the humans, when Elena Gilbert gets here you may run and scream all you wish."

Each of the three humans tasted unusually good, but Elena was doubtless nearby, looking and listening for Damon. He pushed the feed as long as he dared and got out of that well-lit place with so many windows. He came out into the fresh air and sprinted to a neighborhood with old, big, well-kept houses. Damon was inclined to stroll, but when he slowed down he became twitchy. Besides, he was still hungry. He made for the woods.

It wasn't long before Damon came upon two kids sitting on a stump, kissing. He could see them perfectly and they didn't seem to notice him. He muttered, "Eh, carry on."

He heard someone calling, "This way!" and laughter. Damon turned to look. Circles of light from several flashlights flittered ineffectually on and off the trunks of trees. It sounded like about half a dozen teenagers were tramping through the woods. One stumbled enticingly, then laughed breathlessly as she got up again. Damon rushed up close behind the last kid in the ragged line and pulled himself up short. "This looks appetizing."

The kid ducked and whirled around. His expression was a mix of startlement and confusion. Damon wasn't in his feeding-face form, and the teen was wondering where he'd come from, who he was, what he meant by his words.

Damon took the kid's chin firmly in his fingers. "Stay here and don't scream." Damon would have normally let these people run screaming among the trees so that he could chase them, but with Elena on his trail he decided he'd better quiet the kids quickly. He found one straggler behind a tree by following the sound of his fearful breaths. 

Damon arranged the teenagers in a rough circle and drank their blood restlessly, merely snacking though his appetite was strong. He didn't like to go through so many differently-flavored people in a row.

He compelled the bleeding, dazed kids to scatter and to wander home slowly and forget all about him. Soon Damon picked out the sound of giggling, not too distant. He vampire-sped around trees and up behind two girls hiking together, one of them carrying a large, colorful tote. As Damon slowed and stepped close to them his shin cracked a low branch off of a pine and one of the girls turned and saw him. He still had his feeding-face on. The girl's jaw dropped and her eyes widened.

In the next second Damon realized his mistake. The group he'd just bitten and sent on their way was the pack of hounds, these two girls were the foxes, and this was a paper chase. In following the voices of the foxes, Damon had paid no attention to the bits of paper scattered intermittently on the ground. The girl carrying the bag flung it aside and turned to run.

Damon's supernatural speed wasn't fast enough to let him catch the tote before it hit the ground. Confetti spilled everywhere. Now that he knew the bits of paper had value in tracking the foxes in the game, his instinct made him believe he had to collect every piece. The second girl stood petrified, staring at Damon. The girl who had run off shrieked, rushed back, grabbed her friend by the wrist and they tore off for their lives.

Damon _humphed_ and sagged. "Yeah, run." He got on his knees on the damp leaf litter and began picking up paper. He didn't feel like trying to fight his instinct very hard, so he didn't know whether if he made a supreme effort he could have left the paper on the ground. Picking over the leaves and pine needles gave him time to think of how many people he'd left confused and bleeding in this one night. He hadn't healed anyone. Everyone he'd bitten tonight was still wounded.

Damon didn't usually need to heal people he fed from; he knew precisely how much he could take, and took a little less than that, as long as he didn't want to kill them. But he wasn't usually so messy, either. The pack of hounds all had blood seeping into their shirt collars. Damon was much neater when he wanted to be. He had a talented tongue.

He thought of Andie, and a few tears came—he let them dry on his cheeks. Damon had regularly healed Andie after he fed from her. Though she was compelled to let him do whatever he wanted, he neglected to compel her not to complain about it, and she wanted her neck to look nice for her television appearances. He would tell her that her neck looked nice with his bite marks in it, and she would make a disgusted-with-him sound and say, "Why don't you use my arm?"

"I want your neck." Damon pushed her hair aside and nuzzled her skin.

Andie said, half amused, half frustrated, "I can't figure out why I like you."

"You don't like me. I compelled you to be my fake girlfriend."

"You didn't compel me to like you. As for being your fake girlfriend, you never asked me on a real date. One where I could decide whether or not to go with you. And we never go out with my friends."

"Never mind," said Damon. "I'll give you some of my blood and you can get made up to go and look pretty on television. Be thinking of a friend you want to go out with, and I'll see what we can fit into our busy fake-relationship schedule."

"Thank you, you're so generous," Andie said, and patted his cheek and gave him a kiss.

Damon rubbed a handful of confetti off his fingers into the tote. He got a text alert. Then his phone rang. He concentrated hard in order to not lose count of the bits of paper. He wouldn't look at his phone; he knew the messages were from Elena. She would be trying and failing to track him from the laundromat. Those kids that got away from him just now would bring her back on his trail. He hurried with the paper, not only from frustration at being subject to this compulsion, but because if Elena talked to the paper chase foxes, they'd tell her where they'd seen him, and she would find him here, trapped by confetti. He finished counting, stood up, checked the ground for any missed paper bits, and listened. There were no hunters or others about. No Elena yet.

Damon looked at the tote bag he'd refilled with confetti. He had been going to leave it on the ground, but it was a nice bag, a handwoven tote of many colors. The girl had only dropped it because she was in fear for her life. Damon took it with him to the nearest open place of business, which was a dingy blue ice cream parlor. He smoothed out his facial features and snagged a woman who was heading into the parlor. He said, as her eyes widened in concern and horror, "Don't mind what my face looks like. Take this bag and turn it in, someone will be looking for it."

She looked confused, examined the tote with a frown, and took it inside with her. Damon thought about the look she'd given him when she first saw him, and wiped his cheeks and chin with his shirt cuff. Then he hid around a back corner of the ice cream parlor.

There were a few people inside the ice cream parlor. Damon waited outside, around the corner of the painted brick wall. In a few minutes a young man walked out, licking vanilla soft-serve.

Damon grabbed him by one shoulder and spun him to get eye contact, and said, "Don't move."

The guy was a teenager with a double chin and uneven stubble. Apparently to this kid, "Don't move" meant also "Don't lick your ice cream," and he gripped the cone rigidly, holding it up but paying no attention to it. He squinted at Damon's chin. His glance moved to Damon's collar and his big eyes widened, and Damon knew he had drooled blood on his collar. The squint at his chin had been the kid trying to determine, in the weird outdoor fluorescent lights, whether the wet dark smear on Damon's chin were blood, and a glance at the shirt collar had confirmed it.

Damon frowned at the melting ice cream trickling over the guy's wrist and fingers. "Take a lick. You're wasting ice cream." Damon touched his fingertip to the trickle and licked some.

The kid took a mechanical lick of his cone. He whimpered, "Are you a vampire? Am I going to die?"

"You won't die," Damon answered, with a note of disgust. "Somebody will save you. This is Mystic Falls. Somebody who knows me will find you and save you."

"I won't die," his victim said, with a dull, barely-there glimmer of hope.

"You won't die," said Damon. "But you'll come close."

********

Damon stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking a deep sandstone gully that snaked away into the distance, washed and eroded into grooves and stripes of sepia tones. At its rim, dry grass and a few weedy wildflowers clung with their pale roots to balls of crumbling dirt.

Headlights came up behind him and threw Damon's shadow over the cliff. He recognized the motor of Jeremy's car before he turned to look. Jeremy stopped the car in a crunching of dirt and gravel. He got out, and Damon turned away again.

"Some hunter," said Damon. "Had to text me to find out where I am."

"I texted you before I bothered trying to find you. I was waiting for you to wind down from your little rampage. Chasing you at the start would've been pointless. Ten seconds to find you, then I just had to drive here. And here you are, about like I expected you'd be, teetering a car off the edge."

Damon gave him a look from slightly narrowed eyes. "Efficient. I am not, however, teetering a car." He glanced to his right at a boxy, old sedan parked on the crumbling cliff-edge; its headlights were on, and Jeremy's car had kicked up dust that swirled across their light, misting it over. "That's not teetering."

"One tire isn't touching much ground."

"Teetering is rocking back and forth." Damon made the motion with his hand.

Jeremy regarded the old sedan quietly for a minute. "Should we give 'er a shove?"

"No. I'm being good."

Jeremy gave a little snort. "Hunters talk to each other, you know. You want some stranger who's really on a hunt for vampires to come for you? You didn't need so many people just to have an angsty supper. And blood everywhere. There will be rumors going around and I'm going to have to tell all the other hunters that I've got it handled. You can put the cherry on top of this stupid rampage and push the car. I want to see it fall."

Damon tilted his head toward the car. "All right."

Jeremy pushed, Damon did the vampire-strength work, and as the car reached that moment when it was going to fall, Jeremy stepped close to the edge and watched it. Damon stood with his toes just over the decaying rim of the gully and craned to watch, too. The car toppled and rolled, crunched at the bottom and bounced in place before settling.

"That was satisfying," said Jeremy. "Whose car was it?"

Damon chewed his lip, furrowing his brow down at the sedan. "I don't know. I think it might have belonged to Vanilla Ice Cream Guy. The keys were in it, behind the ice cream shop."

Jeremy took out his phone. "I'll see if I can get a picture of the license plate from here."

Damon said, "If it helps, the registration slip is in the glovebox."

"Come on, let's get back to your house. Elena's worried."

"I'm waiting for the car to explode."

"You'll be waiting a long time, unless you want to hop down there and light it up."

Damon gave a small, disgruntled growl, but got obediently into Jeremy's car.

Jeremy drove back to the Salvatore house and pulled up at the front door. Damon planted his heels against the floorboard and gripped the arm rest. Jeremy, with his door unlatched, ready to go inside, looked over at him and said, "Dude. It's your house. You have to come inside sometime." He plucked Damon's sleeve. "It'll be all right."

"Shouldn't you support your sister?"

"You need support, too. You've practically been my big brother since you started dating Elena. I'm thinking about how you feel in all this, too."

"In case you hadn't noticed, I'm the problem here. I'm the one causing her pain."

"You seem to be in some pain."

"Yes, but it's my fault." Damon abruptly flung himself from the car and rushed up the porch steps with one shoulder forward as if his hesitation were a physical obstacle.

Elena opened the door immediately. "You did find him. Oh, thank goodness."

Damon was shouldering past her, but Elena blocked his way. She cupped Damon's face in her palms. "Are you all right?" Without taking her hands from Damon's cheeks she turned to Jeremy and asked, "Is he hurt?" She looked into Damon's eyes again. "Did you kill anyone?"

Damon ducked his head and backed his face out from between Elena's hands, and sidled into the foyer. "That depends. Did you find the guy in the bushes behind the Free-Zee Cone?"

Elena turned stern and disapproving. "Yes. I smelled his blood. I got to him barely in time. Why didn't you heal him yourself?"

Damon lazily checked the cleanliness of his fingernails and found that they were filthy. "I figured you or Tyler would clean up after me."

Elena huffed. "You need to get a shower, and then we can talk."

"We should talk now," said Damon, "if we have to talk."

Jeremy spoke up. "I'm hungry. I'm gonna hang out here and rummage in your kitchen." He gave Damon a pointed look that said something different from his casual tone. Damon responded with a gaze of profound gratitude. Jeremy would not be leaving him alone with Elena.

Elena took Damon firmly by the wrist, led him to the living room and sat him on the couch. She sat with her knees angled toward him, and leaned her earnest face into his space. "Damon, this isn't right. You could have murdered someone tonight. If I'd been a little too late . . . you don't really want to kill people."

"Yes! I do! You don't believe me."

"Pretending that you want that isn't a good way to get rid of me. You don't have to do this sort of thing to make me prove that I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

Damon felt as if cold water welled up inside of him and poured back down over his whole body. He had to say a hard thing that he couldn't take back. He was afraid of it coming out wrong, and of how Elena would react. No, of how Elena would feel. "I'm breaking—I broke up with you already." He hated how small his voice was. "I only let Jeremy make me come back tonight because this is my house. I live here."

Elena held Damon's hands. "Why are we breaking up?"

Damon felt as if he had an answer, but he couldn't speak. This must be what it felt like to be compelled not to talk. He couldn't think of anything, though he felt as if words were forming in his throat. He knew desperately that this was too big to do without a reason, but he couldn't articulate one.

Elena stroked back a lock of Damon's mussed hair. "If there's no reason, then we didn't really break up. We should get back together. It was just a fight, Damon." She squeezed his hands again.

"No. It wasn't. It was not a fight. We weren't having a fight."

"What was wrong, then?"

Damon gritted his teeth. He gave his head a little shake.

Elena looked at him silently for a time. "Okay," she said. "We can talk later." She touched the back of his hand briefly. "I wish you'd—well, I'll talk to you later. We'll work it out again. Do you really want me to leave? I could stay the night in a different bedroom if you think you might need me."

There was no way Damon would be able to leave Elena in a different bedroom. Of course he would need her, and she'd be there. "You'd better go. Back to Whitmore."

Elena looked down and away, chewed her lip, nodded and flicked her hair back over her shoulder. She stood and headed upstairs.


	2. Christmas Masquerade

Damon followed Elena partway to the stairs. In a minute, she came down with her bag, glanced over at Damon and gave him a tiny smile. She poked her head in at the kitchen doorway. "'Bye, Jer-bear. Love you."

"I love you, too," Jeremy said from the kitchen.

Damon stood back, letting Elena have the foyer space from the bottom of the stairs all the way to the door. He asked her, "Will you be all right to drive? Should we call Bonnie?"

"I'll be fine." Elena headed toward the door, then turned back. "Damon . . . we've been through this before. Whatever it is, I can forgive you."

"Don't you get it? You've already forgiven me for the worst thing I could have done. There's nothing new to forgive. I don't need you to forgive me"

"I know you can't change—I mean," Elena gave her head a quick shake and her temple a brief brush with her fingertips. "I know you can't help yourself, but don't do any more rampaging until we make up, okay?"

"I can't promise that."

Elena took a step toward him. "You don't need to pretend to be someone you're not." She hesitated, seemed to make up her mind, ran to him and hugged him. "You don't have to promise."

"Wish me goodbye."

"Don't be silly," said Elena. "This isn't a real goodbye." She tipped her face up for a kiss.

Damon turned away from her lips and quickly kissed her on the cheek. "I'll miss you. I'll miss you forever. For the rest of my life."

Elena gave him a little squeeze around the middle. "I wouldn't go that far. We'll work this out, like we always do. I'll be ready to talk as soon as you are, okay? I'll text Jeremy when I get to the dorm."

"Goodbye," Damon said.

"I'll talk to you soon." Elena slowly pulled the door shut and quietly latched it behind her.

Damon stood by the stairs and listened to her car as it went down the drive and away on the road, beyond his ability to hear the motor. He opened the door and stared out past the glow of the porchlight. Damon switched off the light and stood in the doorway, feeling lightheaded, with the glow coming from the indoor lights at his back. He took a deep breath through his nose. The autumn night smelled of dry leaves. Depressions among the shrubs all the way down and around the drive were filled with singing crickets.

Damon stopped listening for Elena's car in the distance on the smooth road and began to be subsumed in the sound of crickets, as if he were falling asleep. He wove in place and held onto the doorjamb. After some time he began to be aware of Jeremy messing around in the kitchen, clinking glasses and closing cabinet doors.

Jeremy came out of the kitchen with a bottle of cola. "You've been standing there awhile."

Damon faced him. "She's not coming back."

Jeremy made a muffled sound of acknowledgment into the mouth of his cola bottle.

Damon said, "I'm not going to argue with her, not now. There's no point. But I don't need her forgiveness. Not anymore. No matter what she thinks I did. Or no matter what I really did, or in the case of tonight, almost did. Elena already forgave me for the worst thing I could ever do. And then, because of her forgetting she loved me after Bonnie and I died for a little while, she forgave me for the same thing twice . . . wait." Damon turned big eyes on Jeremy. "Do you forgive me for killing you?"

"Sure. It's not like other people haven't done it."

"I was the first."

"Eh." Jeremy shrugged. "I can't tell whether you're ashamed or proud of that."

"Ashamed. Definitely ashamed."

"All right."

"Jeremy. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything."

"Apology accepted. You're looking kind of sick. You okay? Or—probably not."

"No. I am not okay."

Jeremy asked, "Do you want a hug?"

Damon thought it over. He could grab Jeremy, take him to the sofa in the back parlor, and cry on his shoulder for a couple of hours. Acknowledging the pain would surely make him feel worse, and besides that, Jeremy was wearing so many vervain amulets that it would be impossible to compel him afterward to forget it ever happened. Damon answered aloud, "No, thank you."

"I got some paint for that Hoosier cabinet. Help me dig it out of the summer house. I need your ability to see in the dark."

The path to the little house in the woods hadn't been kept up, but in his many antique-collecting visits Jeremy had tramped it down again and made it passable. The summer house was full, window to window and floor to peak, of antique furniture. Damon found the Hoosier by peering through the legs of armoires and chairs and tables. He and Jeremy picked things out of the assemblage and re-stacked them outside, making separate piles so they would remember what was able to fit where. They packed everything back into the summer house except for the Hoosier, and together they brought it back to the main house. Jeremy balanced it and Damon carried most of the weight.

They set the cabinet on some flagstones in the back yard where Jeremy could see by the yellow back porch light. Jeremy set out scraping tools. He wore safety glasses and gloves; Damon wore safety glasses and didn't bother with gloves. Jeremy sanded an area where the cabinet had already had almost all of its paint flaked off. Damon scraped where the paint was thicker but already peeling.

Jeremy said, "If you weren't so bullheaded about wanting to watch me suck at doing high school, you could move to Whitmore to be with Elena."

"Nope. Never going to happen. I want nothing to do with Whitmore, with the campus, with getting near the campus, except for occasional parties, and that only because Elena and Bonnie are there—Caroline is, ironically, no fun at parties."

Jeremy spoke slowly and carefully, eyes on his work. "So you couldn't have lived with Elena anyway. You didn't break up with her because of that."

"Mommy and Daddy had a fight, but it's not your fault," Damon said promptly.

"Shut up. Jerk. I'm serious."

Damon sat back on his heels; he was dismayed to find he had to remove his safety glasses to swipe away a tear. He said, "She didn't even say goodbye to me. I said goodbye to her."

"Breaking up is a pastime for you two. What makes this time different?"

Damon readjusted his glasses and grimly scraped paint with vampire speed and strength, taking shavings and curls of the clean wood underneath. He tossed the tool aside and began to scrape with his bare fingers. It felt as if pins pricked him, then it became all one raw shredding feeling, then an ache all the way up his finger bones. His skin couldn't heal against the wood working its way in. He was smearing blood into the scratches.

Jeremy cleared his throat and nodded at Damon's hand. Damon picked up his scraping tool again and worked with exaggerated care. In his frustration he had to concentrate hard on not stabbing dings into the wood with the corner of his tool. He gave his answer to Jeremy's question. "I don't know."

"Go wash your hands and try to heal that mess," said Jeremy. "I'll keep going here."

"I'm really fine," said Damon, though he was rising to go into the house. "This isn't really hurting myself."

"Yeah, it is. So go take care of your hands and come back when you can be nice," said Jeremy.

"I'm nice," objected Damon. "I'm not hurting anybody."

"You're somebody. Do I need to come inside with you?"

"No," said Damon, sullen.

"Look at these gouges you put in the wood," said Jeremy. "You don't really need to look, I'm not trying to shame you, I'm just saying. How can you do so much damage when the wood hurts your own skin?"

"I'll pay for wood filler," said Damon. "I'll fill it in."

"Yeah, you will."

"Sand out my blood and don't tell Tyler."

"I won't tell him. Maybe I should. Maybe you should. He's your friend, too, and he might need to know how badly you're hurting right now."

"He doesn't need to know anything about me."

"Too late, dude. He already knows a lot about you, and you can't compel it out of him."

"Well." Damon huffed, and stamped a foot on the flagstone. He made loose fists of his sore hands. The splinters stung harder though he barely touched his fingertips to his palms. He frowned and stomped off into the house.

He found tweezers in the bathroom and pulled the largest splinters out of his fingertips, but the tips of the tweezers were too big to help with the forest of minute wood prickles in his skin. He rubbed his hands together to try and scrape the tiny ones out; it burned mightily and it was hard to tell whether he was succeeding. Then Damon tackled the splinters that had been thrust in underneath his fingernails. He couldn't get the tweezers to reach far enough under the edge of the fingernail to grasp the ends of the slivers. He sought a needle in the medicine cabinet and couldn't find one.

In the living room there was a dark walnut secretary; Damon went to it. On its shelf stood some little bronze parrots, a pale yellow china parrot, a white china dog, and a wooden sewing kit with an upholstered top. Damon pulled his sleeve down over his bloody fingertip and undid the catch on the sewing kit. He nudged the lid up with his knuckles so he wouldn't get blood on it. Needles were arranged neatly in the box's midnight-blue silk lining.

Damon glanced up at the print on the wall behind the secretary. It was an Audubon plate of a black and white creeper in its characteristic sideways pose on a twig of black larch. Damon saw it every day, of course. Now, tired of working out the problem of how to extract a needle from the kit without bleeding on the silk, he stared at the print for some time. He abandoned the sewing kit, lifted the Audubon off of the wall, and threw it with some force toward the fireplace.

The glass smashed and the print hung in its frame on a finial of the wrought iron fireplace screen. The finial didn't impale it all the way through, but a protrusion showed through the stiff paper covering the back of the print. Damon winced, tensed for a long, painful moment, then let out a long breath and went to inspect the injury. He lifted the picture off of the finial and turned it carefully over. A few bits of glass tinkled to the hearth.

The print was torn. A hole went through the crux of the larch twig, and ragged lines radiated from it to the bird's head and shoulder. With the glass shards that remained in the frame, Damon couldn't tell whether the lines went all the way into the bird. He laid the picture on the hearth and picked glass pieces out of the frame. Damon forgot his wounded hands until the slivers in his raw fingertips moved and he bled onto the paper. He jerked his hand away, aghast. "I didn't mean—I didn't mean to do it."

There was nothing he could do. The black and white creeper had a smear of his blood across it. Damon left the Audubon on the hearth and went back out to Jeremy.

The gauzy grey backyard was edged with gold, and the line of black cherries had a white halo. Jeremy took one glance at Damon's hands and said, "You didn't finish."

"So?"

"So go get all the wood out. I don't want to see your self-flagellating fetish while we're working on this together."

"I don't have a fetish. That is to say, if I have one, you don't know about it."

"That's it right there." Jeremy nodded toward Damon's inflamed hands. "Destroying yourself."

"This is only destroying me a little bit."

"Come on." Jeremy pulled himself up off the flagstones and removed his safety glasses and gloves. "Come inside." He actually held his hand out to Damon. Damon only hesitated a second before he took it. "Come inside," Jeremy said again, and he led Damon back in. "Got a needle?"

"Sewing box in the living room."

Inside the living room, Jeremy surveyed the broken glass and the Audubon in its frame on the hearth. He let go of Damon's hand, folded his arms, and said, "I respect fine art."

"So do I, of course," said Damon. "Who doesn't?"

Jeremy picked up the print and put it on a round table under a chandelier, where he could examine it closely.

"It can't be fixed," said Damon.

Jeremy made a thoughtful sound. "You can take a piece of the paper from the edge, shave it down and paste it over the stain."

"But I bloodstained it clear across the bird and all."

"Doesn't look like it now."

"Let me see that." The hole the finial had put through the center of the paper had transformed into a dimple. Damon's bloody fingers had left only one large smear, well away from the bird. Damon stared at the print and then looked away. He could think of only one way in which this might have happened. He tried it out on Jeremy. "I bought this print because my mother had some birds like this as pets."

"Hmm. Maybe she fixed it for you."

"Is she here now? Can you see her?"

Jeremy glanced around the room. He was quiet for some time. A clock ticked. Jeremy spoke. "She says you should have thrown one of the bronze parrots. They're unbreakable."

Damon started. "She is talking to you." He went to the secretary and pointed a thumb at the sewing box so Jeremy would know where the needles were. "She knows I can't throw any of the bronzes. Everything on this shelf was hers. The Audubon is mine. Are you still talking to her? Is she gone? What else is she telling you?"

"Eh, she's sending you a lot of loving and caring stuff you aren't in the mood to hear right now."

On the chance that his mother was listening, Damon bit his tongue and did not tell Jeremy that he was a little smartass.

"Sit at the table," Jeremy said. Damon sat and offered his hands. Jeremy sat across from him and examined one inflamed forefinger. He nodded sidewise at the print lying on the tabletop. "I'm going to have this re-glassed."

"Be my guest," said Damon.

"Then I think I'll take it to my room over at Tyler's," said Jeremy.

Damon made a disinterested sound.

"Or I'll let him hang it with his other Audubons in his entryway."

"Over my dead body."

Jeremy laughed.

He held one of Damon's hands and began to ease a splinter out. Damon fretted, "You're going too slow."

"I am not going too slow. This is normal speed for getting splinters out without hurting the patient."

"I'm not patient." Jeremy didn't respond, so Damon repeated his statement to make sure Jeremy got the pun. Jeremy still did not answer, so Damon added, "I left out the 'a'."

"I heard you. I can see you're impatient. I'm still not going to hurt you on purpose."

"I want you to go faster."

"No. I'm not going to make this hurt you the way you wish it would, so stop bugging me about it."

"I should have really hurt someone tonight. Then I wouldn't feel this way. I'd feel better if I had snapped that stupid lizard lady's neck."

Jeremy dropped a blood-soaked sliver on the table. "There was a lizard lady?" His work caused a steady pain, not a stabbing one, and Damon was infuriated at the inadequacy of the sensation.

"She had a lizard, an actual lizard." Damon flinched purposefully, to force Jeremy to make a ragged poke with the needle, but Jeremy was steady and held off until he had Damon's hand solidly in his grasp again.

"Tell me about the lizard. What kind was it?"

"I don't know, she called it something. It was this big thing. In a dog's harness."

"Must have been King," said Jeremy.

"You know King?"

"That lady volunteers at the library, and she brings him sometimes."

"Wait. You go to the library?" Damon forgot all about his hands. Jeremy moved on to the next finger and Damon relaxed in his grasp.

"Yes. I do go to the library. I read books. I despise school, but I love reading. That is, I like reading what I want to read."

"That's good. Reading is good."

Jeremy asked, "Why did you want to kill King's owner?"

"I dunno. She ticked me off."

"How?"

"I don't know."

"You remembered her specifically. What did she say or do that frightened you?"

Damon scoffed. "Please. She couldn't frighten me."

"What did she say?"

Damon looked at his fingers. They healed beautifully in the wake of Jeremy's ministrations. Jeremy only had three to go, on Damon's left hand. Damon answered, "She said I was afraid."

Jeremy held the needle in his right hand, and with his left took Damon's healed right hand, and gently gripped his fingers. Damon squeezed back for a second. There was a real danger that he was going to start sobbing. The same thing he'd envisioned when Jeremy asked him if he needed a hug, it could happen here, he could collapse. Damon pulled back a little, not quite out of Jeremy's grasp, and said, "Don't. Don't do that. Please."

Jeremy let go of Damon's healed hand, took hold again of the one that still had splinters in it, and slid the needle in under a fingernail. Damon relaxed.

********

Damon left his phone on the coffee table while he played Twister solo in the living room by the fire. The phone rang, and some time later sounded a voicemail alert. Somebody had left a long message. It was probably Elena. Damon memorized where his limbs were, got up, spun the arrow, and opened his voicemail. He set the phone back on the table and listened to the message while he arranged himself according to where he'd left off, and proceeded to get his left foot onto green.

The message was, as he expected, from Elena. "I don't want to be the one to leave it at us not speaking. You can call me. I don't understand what's wrong—but I don't want to have one of us thinking the other doesn't want to talk, so I want you to call me as soon as you can. Even if you think you can't tell me what's wrong, or what you did, you shouldn't hesitate to talk to me. We can pick up where we left off. Fresh slate."

Damon sat down in the middle of the Twister mat. He pressed on his forehead with the heels of his hands and moaned, "How am I supposed to get better when you think I'm already as good as I'm going to get?"

The phone rang again. He checked who it was and took the call. "Hello, Caroline."

"Oh my God, I can't believe you're picking up your phone. I thought you'd be avoiding everyone."

"No, only avoiding Elena right now."

"Okay, good. If you feel a murder coming on, call me first."

"Assuming I call anyone, why shouldn't I call Jeremy first?"

"I don't know! I'm trying to help. Besides, Jeremy's a hunter, and if you admit to him that you feel murdery, he might forget that he likes you and kill you by instinct. I'm your vampire friend. When you guys, I mean you and Elena, are together I don't keep in touch with you personally as much as I should. I talk about you with Elena, but I hardly talk to you, because Elena talks about you all the time, so I think I know what's going on with you. So I'm sorry about that. When you get back together this time I'll try and make sure I touch base with you more often. Remember, the idea is to call me _before_ you murder someone."

"I'll keep that in mind. But I—"

Caroline had barely paused for breath. "Okay, I've gotta go."

"Wait."

"Yes?"

"I'm not—it's not happening. The getting back together."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," Damon said, his tone suddenly airy. "I don't feel like it."

"Look, you don't have to explain to me. And I'm in a rush, so—"

"Yeah, you'd better go."

"Okay—remember, associate me with feeling like murdering someone. Argh—that's not what I meant!"

Damon laughed a little. "Okay. Goodbye, Care Bear."

********

Damon went for a combined hunt and stroll, and found some late-season picnickers at the edge of the woods. They offered him a turkey sub and potato salad. He chatted with them for a while and then compelled them to let him drink some of their blood. He was walking home when Bonnie called.

"Nice going, dork. I thought you two were supposed to be a forever thing this time. What happened? Why now?"

"None of your Bon-Bon business."

"You don't know why, do you. You got into some random fight and walked out for no reason."

"I had a reason. An excellent reason."

"Yeah. Um . . . I don't know if it helps to know what it looks like to somebody on the outside, but you're doing the right thing."

Damon _humphed_.

Bonnie said, "Personally, I would have drawn the line when she magically forgot she loved you. On purpose."

Damon sputtered briefly. "I was dead."

"Yeah. So was I. Kinda makes it worse."

Damon began to speak and had to pause because he was thronged with memories of how he had felt when it happened. He recovered swiftly, and said, "I forgave her." He sounded sad, though he hadn't meant to.

Bonnie said, "She didn't—still doesn't really seem to know that she needed forgiving. Besides, she forgot she loved you but didn't forget she was best friends with me. If we had stayed dead, she would have forgotten you permanently."

Again Damon took a minute to respond. "Luckily I never stay dead for long."

"Huh," Bonnie said thoughtfully, "me either. Mainly, I'm calling to spread a little of the grief around, and to make sure you haven't self-destructed. I can't vent to Elena. She spent last night in my bed, crying."

Damon winced and worked his jaw. He said nothing and Bonnie went on. "Babysitting my roommate is the dumbest, least fun reason to not be getting any sleep in college. When she stops crying in my bed she'll start the manic, self-sacrificing phase."

"Poor Bon-Bon."

"Yep, poor me. And poor Caroline, who has to deal with her, too. When you break up with Elena, you break up with all of us."

Damon gripped the phone. "As in—you won't be calling again?"

"What? Oh, not like _that_. I'll be calling. You have to listen to me complain."

Damon drew a long breath of relief. "I can do that."

********

Damon took his coffee outside and sat on the porch. The late-fall sunshine was a clear, bright yellow. The air was so still that the dead grasses in the backyard barely stirred, unless a mouse moved them by scurrying through them, or by climbing a stem. Damon took his mug and moved to the grass. It was dry enough to sit down in it. He asked Stefan, over the phone, "Where are you?"

"Grand Canyon."

Damon took a sip of his coffee and licked his lips. "How is it? Is it very majestic?"

"What are you calling for?"

"Elena and I. . ."

"I know. She called me."

"Ah."

"She said you broke up with her, instead of her breaking up with you."

"I guess I did. Yes, I did."

Stefan said, "She's worried about you. She said you won't tell her whatever you did that you're ashamed of. She seems to think that you believe that you don't deserve her."

"Well, of course I don't deserve her! We all know that. If I was going to break up with her because of that I'd have done it long ago."

"You did."

"Yes, but then we got back together again and had lots and lots of make-up—"

"Don't say it."

"—sex."

Stefan sighed.

Damon asked, "Are you possibly thinking of getting back together with her yourself? Don't do that. It would complicate things for me."

"I'm not going to pursue her. She broke up with me. I don't know if you remember, it had something to do with my brother. He, uh, stole her from me."

"What else was I supposed to do? You had to go and get involved with her. Then I had to get involved. If you'd left her alone, I would have let her be. You ruined everything, Stefano."

"It's true, my powers of ruining everything are far-reaching," said Stefan, in his lazy deadpan.

"She had a sweet little mortal life going on and you just had to go and touch it."

"I'm not the one who turned her into a vampire."

"It was an accident!"

Stefan made a wordless sound.

"That was a judgy sound. Don't make judgy sounds."

"She'll want to be friends."

An icy grip took hold of Damon's stomach, and his heart shrank. "Stefan. I don't think I can do that."

"Don't panic. It's not as bad as you think. Matt and I lived through it, you can, too. She actually just wants to check in and make sure she left your emotional settings on 'happy' so she can turn her back on you again without any guilt."

"My point is, or was, before you changed the subject, if you get back together with Elena, I'll have to steal her again, and I cannot go back to her. So you see how that would complicate things for me."

"I'm not going to go to her and beg," said Stefan. "I don't hate myself that much. Unlike some people I could mention. One of them is in this conversation right now, and that's the only hint I'm giving you."

"I don't hate myself. Know why? I'll answer for you, it's because I'm awesome."

"She doesn't want to date me, anyway," said Stefan. "She doesn't believe that you've really broken up. She wants to get back together with you."

For a second Damon had a pain in his middle, then he felt hollowed out, as if even his skin had gone, as if his clothes were a shell. In a second he was real again, aware of the heaviness of his body, of how much space his hands took up. "But on to important business. I assume you're draining all the burros of their precious blood. How do they taste nowadays?"

"There are no burros. You're thinking of a long time ago. There are only mules now."

"Oh," said Damon.

Stefan said, "It gets better. It takes time." 

Damon huffed—in anyone else it would have been a snort of rage. His voice was sharp. "You don't get to say that. You don't get to say anything like that. About things getting better. Not after what you did to Andie."

There was a long pause. The winds at the Grand Canyon were making rough noises around Stefan's phone. Damon could hear when Stefan cut off the wind by adjusting his hand on the phone. Damon pressed into the silence. "I had a girlfriend, too. Before Elena. You stole my girlfriend from me. I'm not the only one of us who was going around stealing people. You killed Andie, and she didn't deserve it."

Another lingering pause, broken by gusts of static. Finally, Stefan spoke. "Forget I said anything."

********

Autumn passed and winter set in. It snowed once, and the snow lingered on the ground in spite of some rain. Most days were gray, but twice Damon saw two clouds part and show a slim diamond of stunning turquoise. In those moments, he was grateful for his daylight ring.

One December night, Damon sat on the sofa in the back parlor, eyelids heavy, half-seeing a page of an aged magazine. He had the magazine cover rolled back in his hand. The rich colors of the shiny pages had developed veins of worn white. Damon's phone buzzed. Caroline asked, without preliminary, as soon as Damon picked up the call: "How are you?"

Damon stretched and yawned. "Hello, Care Bear. I'm sleepy. Looking at this old article about the Lockwoods' Christmas celebration. Mrs. Lockwood decorated a ridiculous tree. It was in the music room with the white fireplace—you can see that to the side in the photo. Ostentatiously gigantic spruce—it says so here, twelve foot spruce, but of course you can't see the tree underneath all the decorations. We have to take the spruce on faith."

Caroline said, "The music room is big enough for it. But how have you been?"

Damon continued as if she hadn't spoken. "One hundred and thirty-five antique glass and metal ornaments, all of them shaped like Scottish Terriers, almost all of them red for some reason—they have an inset with a few select ones here—and crammed in between the dogs are a hundred fresh poinsettias in water in floral picks. What's the point of having a tree in all that mess? Half the poinsettias are pink. The rest are good old-fashioned red, to match the Scotties, I suppose. Can't imagine where she got so many red Scottish Terriers. Mrs. Lockwood always could find things, get things. This was fifteen years ago. Think—it might be a stretch to say that everyone was alive back then—I was undead. Same as now. You were alive. Little Jeremy Gilbert was only a plump hunter pup, who'd never even held a crossbow. . ."

"But how are you, how are you doing."

"Hungry."

"Besides that! How are you doing, really? Since you broke up with Elena. I'm calling to check on you."

"Oh, how I'm doing. Well, even you mentioning it is like being stabbed in the stomach—and I know whereof I speak regarding that simile—and it makes me feel like vomiting. My heart is slowly tearing in two and then it will leave my chest and I suppose at that point I'll die."

Caroline made a skeptical sound. "You think you're able to sound sarcastic but you're not. You don't. Whatever."

"Please. I can be sarcastic while dying. It's a gift."

"Speaking of gifts, when I come back to Mystic Falls on Christmas Eve, Salvatore House had better be sufficiently festive or I'm not giving you your present."

"What is it?"

"You'll have to wait and see."

"But I won't get to see it if I'm not festive enough."

"Correct. Well, the house has to be. I get that you're heartbroken, so you don't have to be internally festive. But you have to have a tree. Do you have a tree? Is it decorated yet? Who's decorating it?"

"I am. Myself. I have impeccable taste."

"I know that. Who's decorating it with you?"

"Nobody."

"That is not how you decorate a Christmas tree, Damon."

"All right, then I'll have a nice person for dinner and they'll help me."

Caroline gave a small, ladylike sputter. "A nice person? One person? That does not count as a tree decorating party. That makes you, sitting at home, eating take-out."

"I'm dying of a broken heart, Care Bear. What do you want from me?"

Caroline sighed. "I guess the dinner person idea will have to be good enough. I'll call back later and check on you to make sure you did that."

"What—I have to do it now?"

"Weren't you going to?"

"Eventually."

"Look, I happen to know Stefan is someplace out West for the Christmas season, so you are the only one left to make certain the Salvatore House is festive for Christmas. So make it festive! I'm going to call Tyler—"

"Oh, no. No, you don't. Lockwood and his servants have four trees up already. You call him, he'll come over here and see my dark, undecorated windows and you know what he will do?"

Caroline asked impatiently, "What?"

"He will scoff at me."

"I demand a photo of some nice, cleanly dressed, unharmed person standing in front of your Christmas tree, holding an ornament, in less than twenty-four hours. No. Make it two people. A tree decorating party."

********

Damon drove to the Mystic Grill. Christmas lights were up and a time-beaten Santa Claus mascot stood in the window. Santa had some burst seams and his beard was a little scraggly, and some of the jolly coloring on his nose and cheeks had rubbed off. He held a sign which read, "Peace on Earth." Damon went in to the bar just long enough to ask for Matt Donovan's truck keys, then drove out to a cut-your-own tree farm.

He picked out a fat little pine for the foyer, and a more stately spruce for the front parlor. On his way home Damon stopped at a bakery and a gift shop and bought bagfuls of individually wrapped bundt cakes, stamped cookies, cheese spreads, poppy seed crackers, and candies.

Damon unloaded the trees at his house, returned to the Grill, switched Matt's truck for his own car, and went inside to the bar. "Thanks for the loan of your truck." He handed Matt a tiny jar of candied orange peel.

"Um, okay," said Matt.

The bedraggled Santa in the window was accessorized with a string of jingle bells; Damon gave it a few shakes on his way out.

Back at the Salvatore house, Damon put both of the trees in stands. In the foyer and the front parlor he polished the furniture and moved it to accommodate the trees. He pulled ornament boxes out from the crawlspace under the stairs and set to work on the pine in the foyer. First he strung it with a rainbow of large, bright bulbs from the 1960s. He hung it with rose-shaped ornaments, and candies, cookies, brownies, and chocolates.

Salvatore family tradition was that anybody who came to the house during the holiday season should take something away with them. Damon made a mental note to compel some carolers to visit him so he could give them things off the tree. He knelt on the floor arranging boxes and bags of treats on the tree skirt. It was a deep green velour, appliqued with corduroy reindeer. Damon absently held a box of rum cake, looking at the reindeer silhouettes. He shook out of his pause, finished arranging the tree, and stood back to get the full effect. Then he took out his phone and went to the Internet.

He found what he wanted and made a call, put his phone back in his pocket and went to work on the front parlor spruce. He spiraled it with masses of delicate orange and white lights.

Having been forewarned that Caroline would be giving him a gift, Damon went upstairs and searched through some of the heirloom jewelry he had accumulated over the decades. He selected a silver hairpin, gave it a good polishing, and tied it to the parlor spruce with a ribbon.

The tree wasn't finished, but it was nighttime and Damon was hungry. He went to find someone to feed on, and ended up talking to the guy over a few drinks at the Grill. Afterward, Damon lazed around the house until he could keep the appointment he'd made by phone.

The next day, Damon sent Caroline a photo of two farmers in flannel jackets and fleece-lined caps, along with a live reindeer, inside the Salvatore foyer, next to the little decorated pine.

He sent the picture to Caroline with no comment. He also sent it to Stefan, with the note: "Christmas Bambi in case you show up for dinner."

Caroline called right away. "Okay, that was ridiculous, but festive," she conceded. "In the spirit of the season. Good job."

"Just give me one hint. Is my gift edible?"

"No."

"Is it for the house?"

"Yes."

"Does it go on the wall?"

"Nope," said Caroline.

"I know what it is," said Damon. "It's a hand-embroidered table runner. From when a lot of us went to the folk-art show. You went back and bought one when I couldn't decide between blue and red or yellow and green."

"Ooh—you—you're a surprise-ruining jerk!"

"Hooray, I guessed it! I win Christmas forever."

Caroline made a sharp, little, indignant noise. "Just because you win Christmas one year doesn't mean you win it in perpetuity! But yes. I bought you the blue and red one. Not very red. More burgundy."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. See you Christmas Eve."

She hung up. Suddenly Damon felt it in his gut, and everything constricted. Christmas Eve was coming, and he and Elena would not be together.

He didn't know how long he stood there, his arms quivering as if he were in a rage, but the only thing he felt was a tightening in his stomach that wanted to rise into panic. If he didn't move it wouldn't come for him.

His phone received a text. It was from Stefan. "I didn't realize that the reindeer at the North Pole wore ear tags."

Damon typed, "Then you learned something new today." His arms stopped shaking. He took a deep breath, and still felt a little queasy.

Stefan replied with a photo of himself wearing a Christmas elf hat in green and white stripes with a yarn pom-pom.

Damon got himself a drink—the alcoholic kind—and wandered into the front parlor and looked at the spruce. The lights and Caroline's hairpin were its only decorations so far. Damon muttered aloud, half into his glass; his voice resonated back at himself. "This is more than I can do—this Christmas is more than I can do."

He got another text and sat on the floor so he could set his drink on the rug. Bonnie had sent him a photo of herself, Caroline, and Elena. Caroline and Elena wore elf hats with attached pointy, plush elf ears, and Bonnie wore white-and-pink plush bunny ears. She had added the text: "Not enough elf hats to go around."

Damon enlarged the photo and focused on Elena's dimpling smile and the light reflected on one of her dark eyes. He repeatedly looked at each girl in turn, stared at Elena again, and finally decided on saving the picture, though if it had only been Elena, he would have deleted it. He stayed on the rug and took another swallow of his drink. Elena herself texted him. "Saw deer pic. It's good to see you having fun."

He could have texted back some silly thing, but then she would have wanted to really talk to him.

The ornament boxes were still waiting by the tree. Damon stayed on the rug and gazed up at the spruce. "I should have gotten something smaller. There's no way I'm going to have the emotional health to do this whole tree." He wasn't watching out against tears, and one welled up and escaped. He dashed it away and gave a quick shake of his head.

He got a text from someone named Make Me Pretty Barbie. Damon briefly tried to remember whom he had put in his phone under that name. The text said, "I'm told this is required," and there was a photo of Rebekah Mikaelson in an elf hat. Neon script across the bottom of the picture read, "Merry Christmas from New Orleans."

Damon smiled. He typed a reply: "Merry Christmas."

He leaned and reached for a box and got hold of an ornament. The bottom branches of the tree were out of arm's reach. Damon held the ornament up by its ribbon and tossed it, and it landed on a twig and slid along it; the twig bounced but the ornament did not fall. Damon hoped that it really would drop into place and hang by its ribbon, but it weighed down the tip of the branch and dropped to the floor. "Stay there, then," Damon told the ornament. "Here, have a friend." He tossed another ornament and it skittered down through the spruce needles and bumped into the first one, on the floor. Damon awarded himself a point.

He dragged one of the boxes over to himself and lifted out trays, fingered ornaments and remembered where they came from, and whether they were his or Stefan's. He finished his drink.

Tyler called. "Where have you been?"

"At home. Where do you think?"

"You haven't been here in a long time."

"You should be happy about that," said Damon. "I'm not very pleasant company right now."

"Come over here," said Tyler, "unless you'd rather hang out with your deer."

"It's a borrowed deer," said Damon. "It has gone back to the North Pole, from whence it will pull the sleigh that delivers presents to good little vampire-werewolf hybrids on Christmas Eve. Have you been good?"

"I've been good, if being nice to the people whose blood I drink counts," said Tyler. "I'd leave Santa some cookies in exchange for some venison."

"So would I," mused Damon. "I tried the reindeer's blood before I sent it home. I'd rather have my deer cooked, on a plate."

"Get your ass over here," said Tyler. "We want to play Texas hold 'em."

Damon made a small, disdainful sound. "I hate poker."

"So? You're already suffering."

Damon made another sound, a hesitant one this time.

Tyler pressed him. "What do you like?"

"I like cribbage."

"We'll play cribbage. Nobody cares but you. Teams or four hands?"

"Either way's fine."

"Get over here."

"I'm warning you, I'm miserable right now."

"You can be miserable here as easily as at your house. Jeremy will be here and you can feed from him."

Damon said, "Me feeding from Jeremy makes Elena upset."

"Good thing you're not dating her, then," said Tyler.

********

Damon, Jeremy, Matt and Tyler played cribbage at a table in what Tyler referred to as the "little white parlor" at the Lockwood house.

Tyler said, "Who here got an invite to the Fells' masquerade?"

"Me," said Jeremy.

"Me as well," said Damon, "but I'm not going."

"Me neither," said Jeremy.

"Yeah, same," said Tyler. "The Fells can't throw a party to save their lives."

"I ought to go after all and make that into ironic foreshadowing," said Damon.

Jeremy scoffed and leaned sideways so he could elbow Damon hard in the ribs. "You'd better not. I don't want to work tonight."

Tyler said, "I meant the food sucks."

"Anyway," said Damon, "bad food or not, the Fells are boring, and their parties are boring."

"We're boring," said Matt. "We're playing cribbage."

"Your defeat at the hands of Jer-Bear and myself will answer for my witty retort."

********

That night, Damon lay on his back in bed and thought about Andie. If Andie had been there, she would have given him some good advice. He wouldn't have listened, but it'd be good to hear her give it to him anyway.

He couldn't fall asleep. When he threw off the covers the house was cold. Cold couldn't hurt him, and he didn't shiver, but it bothered him to be in a cold house and to be a man who didn't need heat. He put on a dressing gown and went downstairs, lit the parlor fire because humans need fire, because Christmas needs fire, because he didn't want to be alone. He plugged in the tree lights.

The boxes of ornaments were still by the tree. The waxed cardboard was shiny, almost greasy-looking with age, and never seemed to tear or wear out. Damon opened the flaps of a box and lifted an ornament off of the top tray.

It was the one Elena had given him for Christmas last year. She had given one to each friend who spent Christmas at the Gilbert lake house, and one to Tyler, because she had been planning on him being at the lake house, too. He didn't end up coming with them because Klaus murdered his mother just two weeks before Christmas. Elena had tried to convince Tyler that it would cheer him up to join them, but in the end she had wrapped up his ornament and left it for him at his house. They had tried a group phone call with Tyler on Christmas Day, but he hadn't felt like talking.

The ornament was a thin oval, custom woodburned to depict the Gilbert lake house. Damon flipped it over to look at the back. Elena had handwritten a note in gold metallic ink. "Damon," (Here she had added a little heart.) "You make me come alive. Merry Christmas. Love you always, Elena"

When she had given it to him Damon had said to her, "Your love note is ironic, considering I literally made you undead."

"That wasn't your fault. Of course I wasn't thinking about that. This is just meant to be a nice sentiment."

Damon had looked at the note again. "It's poetry. Did you come up with it yourself?"

Elena swatted him lightly and gave him an embarrassed grin. "You know I can't write well. I did my best."

He lowered his mouth to her ear and said earnestly, "You make me feel—I mean _come_ alive, too."

Elena had laughed and kissed him to shut him up.

Damon held Elena's signature to his lips, leaned over and tied the ornament to a low branch of the spruce. Then he snarled, ripped the ornament back off of the tree and threw it into the fire.

He went back upstairs and dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and an electric blue silk necktie. He had a pair of Christmas cufflinks that Stefan had given him a couple of decades before in a fit of generosity—little silver Santa heads, their design taken from some vintage advertisement.

Damon walked out the front door. The moon was bright white and lighting the edges of clouds. It was a lovely, cold night for a walk. Besides, Damon didn't want his convertible spotted on the Fells' property.

There were cars parked along the street in front of the Fells' high iron fence, and more cars on a circle of gravel at the side of the house. Damon swept up the portico steps and between narrow white pillars at the Fells' side entrance, to a black door with shining metal trim and knocker. He didn't have to knock; a servant opened the door and Damon flipped up his invitation between two fingers so the man could see it. The servant waved him in.

A maid gestured to stop Damon in the entryway. "Excuse me, sir, you need a mask." She handed him a flimsy domino, which he pinched with some distaste between thumb and forefinger.

In the hall, people milled around in sparkly, silky, and sequiny costumes, murmuring to each other and drinking what Damon could tell by the scent was mediocre champagne. Guests with full-face masks sipped through straws. To the right was the gleaming banister of the open staircase; to the left, two sets of double doors led into the ballroom. Damon held his mask up without fastening it and watched the dancers through the first set of doors.

Opposite the doors, the outside wall of the ballroom was composed of tall windows, their curtains tied back showing night outside. A couple of narrow casements tucked between the curtains had been cracked open to admit air.

Damon leaned into the room and looked down the interior wall. Beyond the second set of doors, some kind of clown or scarecrow in pastel patchwork stood alone amongst potted orange trees decorated in tinsel and white lights. Damon backed out into the hall, entered the ballroom by the second set of doors and approached the clown.

The boy's bright white papier mache mask covered his cheeks and forehead. He was eating a ham salad puff. Damon let him finish it—it was only two-bite sized—then he bowed and said, "Please remove your mask, sir."

"We're not supposed to unmask yet," protested the clown.

"Everyone can tell who you are by looking at your chin and neck, Freckles."

The guy complained, "That's not the point. It's the idea of the party to stay masked until they tell us—"

"Give me that mask." Damon made sure the clown was looking into his eyes. "And keep quiet about it. You can wear this one." He handed over the complimentary domino.

The papier mache mask was more comfortable than the flocked domino, and covered more of Damon's face. He tied it on and made his way around the outside edge of the dance floor. The cold air coming in by the casements swirled among the dancers. Their body heat ascended, and at chest height the room was alternately chilly and muggy-hot.

In a corner on the outside wall was a heavy curtain that could not be hiding a window. Damon lifted it and found it cloaked a narrow passage. He dropped the curtain behind himself to muffle the ballroom sounds, and listened and sniffed; no sounds of breathing or heartbeats, and the only scents were of aged shellac and varnish. One door led to a closet; another door led to a room full of spare chairs.

Damon returned to the dance floor. Past the first set of double doors, a gentleman was just returning the Queen of Hearts from _Alice in Wonderland_ to rest by the wall after a dance. She laughed at something her partner said, then stood near the wall and fanned herself as he went away. In case the man was only going to get her a drink and would soon return, Damon hastened over to her, but without seeming to hurry. He stood before her and bowed. "Humbly begging the pleasure of the next dance with your majesty."

The Queen of Hearts held her hand up for him, and Damon took it and led her out among the dancers. With one hand she held a heart-shaped mask on a stick to cover her face. The orchestra began a new song, and Damon and the queen danced to the curtain over the hallway. Damon said, "Come with me," and pulled her into the passage with him.

"Mr. Salvatore, what is it you want?"

"Please. It's impolite to recognize me before the unmasking." Damon lowered the queen's mask-holding hand, she looked up into his eyes, and he told her, "You don't know who I am."

"No, I don't know you," she agreed, searching his face.

"Hold still." Damon dropped his fangs and nicked the queen on the neck, enough to get a trickle going. He didn't drink, only licked his lips. "Don't tell anyone about me or the blood, until they ask, and then you say, 'There is a vampire here.' Do you understand?"

"I understand," the Queen of Hearts said in a dull tone, and she drifted off, her wide hoop skirts rustling.

Damon went to fetch one dancer after another. He bid each of them to be quiet and bit them, some on the neck, some on the arm. He took a lick, not much, not enough to get full. If they tasted good he chased their blood with his tongue, but as soon as he began to feel good the taste turned sour. Damon compelled each person to let their wounds bleed, and to tell anyone who asked about them, "There is a vampire here."

On his trips to the dance floor Damon could hear the evolution of the talk:

"What's that on your neck? Is that blood?"

"There is a vampire here."

At first this was met with laughter. "Who is it? I don't see any Dracula costumes."

Later, someone said to their partner, "That's real blood. You're bleeding. How did that happen?"

"There is a vampire here."

"I'm serious—what happened to your neck?"

Damon would no longer be able to hide his guests in the curtained corridor without being noticed. Someone would see that people who emerged therefrom were bleeding. He gave the last man he'd bitten plenty of time to return to the party, then went out and stood where most of the people on the dance floor would be able to see him.

A song ended, there was a little applause; about half the people on the dance floor were distracted, looking around apprehensively. Before the orchestra could strike up again, Damon declared, "I've found the vampire!" and lifted his mask off to reveal his feeding-face. He felt the pressure of the thickening, dark veins under his eyes, and knew the rest of his face turned ghastly white. He drew his lips well back off of his fangs and let out a wet hiss, a froth of blood at the corner of his lips.

He put the mask back on and zipped vampire-speed outdoors to wait in a thicket of shrubs lit up with strings of white lights. In a minute masqueraders fleeing the party ran out. Damon grabbed one who was a little apart from the others. The guy let out a yell, but Damon didn't bother telling him not to scream. "Tree-decorating party at my house—that's the Salvatore house. Meet me there." He shooed the man away, darted ahead of half a dozen other guests hurrying to their cars, and quickly compelled them to freeze and be silent. He ordered each of them to attend his party and released them to drive over to his house.

Damon caught several more masqueraders who were in couples or threes and easy to compel all together. He dodged out of sight of a larger group by hopping over an elaborate concrete balustrade onto a pale stone side porch. There, he discovered a couple who seemed unaware of the flurry and were loudly kissing each other in the dark, hidden on a bench between two huge planting urns. Damon cordially compelled them to join the party at his home. Then he ran back to his house to make it there ahead of his guests.

Damon turned on the front porch light and left the door open, grabbed some wine from the rack in the kitchen, and cleared off a console table in the foyer. He opened some of the packages from under the little pine tree and arranged the treats on green glass platters, muttering his disappointment to himself at having no garland on the banister, but it couldn't be helped now. People were shutting car doors and coming to the front door. Damon hurriedly put a boogie-woogie piano record on the living room player and turned up the volume.

He set some of his guests to finishing the ornamentation of the spruce in the front parlor. "Don't put the decorations too close together. Make it classy." He commanded others to dance in the living room, to provide a party atmosphere—no aimless milling around.

Damon's phone went off. It was Jeremy. "Jer-bear, you're missing out on the fun."

Jeremy said, "By 'fun' you mean the vampire hunt? If we're lucky, I'm the only one on it. Somebody put your vamped-out face on the Internet. Luckily you had gone all out with the change and weren't too recognizable. I told the other hunters that I live in Mystic Falls and I'd get the truth. That I'd handle you."

"I do not need to be handled."

Jeremy demanded, "What's all that noise in the background?"

"I am hosting a party."

"How many people are there?"

"Two—four—it's hard to count them. They're dancing. They are having a wonderful time. Hear the music?"

"Get them out of there before someone sees a party going on at the Salvatore House and decides to stop by to crash it. They'll realize you were the vampire at the Fells' masquerade."

"Where else could I get this many partiers on short notice? And they're already dressed for it."

The dancers parted for Tyler Lockwood. He stalked through the living room toward Damon.

Damon's light tone dropped. "You sent Tyler. Damn it, Jeremy, I do not need babysitting by a—"

Tyler glanced at Damon's phone. "That Gilbert?" He snatched the phone, growled, "I'm here," into it, ended the call and tossed the phone back to Damon.

Damon said, "Party-crashing hybrids are not welcome—"

"Shut up or I'll bite you."

Damon breathed hard through his nose and his eyes flashed, but he stood stiffly still. Tyler surveyed the party. "I'm taking these people out of here."

"Can't you leave me one nice, fun one? The Bo-Peep with the crook and the toy lamb. I like that one."

"No. If you wanted only one person you could have taken one from the Fells'. Now you can't play with any of them."

"Well—make sure they all take something off the tree in the foyer."

Tyler scoffed. He took a swashbuckler by the shoulder and told him, "Go home." The man nodded and drifted toward the door. Damon hurried after him and stuck a candy cane in his sash.

Damon stood alone in the living room while Tyler herded all of the humans out the door. Tyler turned down the music, listened intently, sniffed, and was apparently satisfied that there were no more humans in the house. He cranked the song back up and made for the door. He was already down the porch steps when Damon rushed to the door and yelled after him, "Lockwood! Take something off the tree."

Tyler stopped, flung his head back irritably, turned and came back inside. "Are any of these little boxes mini fruitcakes? All I can smell is pine sap and candy canes."

Damon helped Tyler find several fruitcakes in tiny white boxes, tied to the branches with ribbon.

"I'll put them on the bird feeder. Birds love that shit."

"Merry Christmas," said Damon.

Tyler muttered what might have been an appropriate response, waved and left with his fruitcakes.

Jeremy drove up. Damon groaned and withdrew into the living room. He flipped the record and increased the volume. Jeremy pounded a couple of times on the door, opened it, and called out, "It's me, I'm coming in." He stepped into the foyer and raised his voice over the music. "I don't see any cars outside. Did Tyler break up your stupid party? Can you turn that down?"

Damon danced in the living room, pretending not to hear him until Jeremy turned the music down himself. Then Damon stopped dancing and said, "Jeremy, excellent timing. I was wanting to talk with you."

"You wanted to talk with me. You could have talked to me when I was your partner in cribbage. That was this very night. It's not even daylight yet. You had your teeth on my neck hours ago. The report on the hunters' network—it's to get my attention, isn't it. If you wanted my attention you could have just called me, you dumbass."

"Asking nicely is for good people. I am a bad person."

Jeremy gave a deep, demonstrative sigh, almost a groan. "Come with me to George Webb so I can keep an eye on you."

Damon said plaintively, "Can't you feed me first?"

"No. Not before I've had something to eat. Did you even drink any blood from those people, or did you just bite them?"

"Every time I bit someone I got blood on my lips, and I licked it."

Jeremy grimaced. "Wait until after I've eaten. My mood'll be better then. I fed you at Tyler's before cribbage, you won't dessicate if you wait until I've had a burger."

"I have blood on my shirt."

"So go change it."

"I only need to button on a new collar," said Damon. "I should wear these more often."

"If you think you need a collar to go to George Webb this time of night, fine. I can wait while you change it."

At George Webb, with a sampler plate of fried cheese curds, french fries, and fried pickles in front of him, Jeremy asked, "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

"What would you like for Christmas? I haven't finished my list."

"Fine, don't talk." Jeremy shrugged. "You can buy me a new leather jacket. I want it gift wrapped."

Damon spun the salt shaker on the tabletop. It made a small sound of glass rattling. "I know why I broke up with your sister."

"Congratulations?"

"Do you want to know why?"

"I can think of a few reasons."

"Pick the stupidest. It's a stupid reason."

"The stupidest reason I can think of is that you're happy with her and you're punishing yourself by taking that away."

"I've already done that," Damon said quietly. "It didn't 'take'. We got back together, those times."

"Why did you break up with her, then? Do you want me to ask?"

"I'm not. I'm not happy. With her. Not the way Elena defines happiness. And she needs me to be happy all the time."

Jeremy made a small noise that served the purpose of a shrug. "She doesn't need that. It's just convenient for her."

"The night I broke up with her, she said, 'We should be happy.' And I knew she didn't mean we, as in me and her, she and myself. It's not about us. Because most of the time when she says, 'We should be happy,' the next thing she'll tell me is, _you_ should be happy. Me. 'We' means me, Damon, by myself. And it used to work out that when I was having a sad time, if she came to visit me, I could always tell her the truth. I would say she'd fixed everything, that I was better now, that things were fine now because she was there. With me. But what do you do with Elena when she's with you and you're still not happy enough for her?"

Jeremy said, "Elena called me a couple days ago to make sure I didn't need yelling at to finish high school. I asked her why she wanted me to graduate, anyway. She's not all into the ceremony and tradition, not the way Caroline is."

Damon gave him a sharp look. "I want you to graduate."

"I know, I know. But I'm asking if you know what she said."

"She said you need to graduate. . ."

"So I'll be happy. I think it bugs her that I'm not guaranteed to be happy whenever she turns her back on me. Why do you want me to graduate? Did you have high school back in pioneer days? Did you graduate?"

"Naturally, I did. But it was easy for me. I'm smart."

Jeremy snorted and smiled. "Dick. But why does it matter to you whether I graduate? Am I a project? Is it just something for you to do?"

"No. I want you to graduate because it's hard for you. I want you to do something hard, before you go off and do even harder things. So that when you're not happy, you remember that you did something difficult. That you got through it. That you finished something that you thought you couldn't finish."

Jeremy's phone received a text; he picked it up and typed a reply. "Just telling another hunter that I found you and you're under control."

"I'm hungry," Damon reminded him.

Jeremy pointed at his own plate. "Not done eating."

Damon reached across, selected a cheese curd, dipped it in mayonnaise and ketchup and ate it. "I should go back to her. We should be together. What kind of a man breaks up with a woman because she wants him to be happy?"

Jeremy ate in silence for some time.

Damon tapped the table with his fingertips. "So I'm going back to her."

Still Jeremy was silent.

"She'll still want me to be happy after I've broken up her sweet heart into tiny little pieces," said Damon. "The thing I dread the most is that phone call. It's coming. As soon as she knows I can't go back, she'll call."

"And she'll say she just wants you to be happy."

"It's . . . it's her dismissal. I don't want to be dismissed, Jeremy. I hate being dismissed!"

"Yep. It'll suck." Jeremy tossed a cheese curd into his mouth and chewed.

"I'm going to hurt someone. I'm going to find someone to hurt."

"Uh-huh. Do you think I want pancakes for dessert? Or peach pie? Is the peach pie here any good?

"I'm sure it'll be made with canned pie filling." Damon leaned across the table. "You have to stop me. You're a born hunter. You'll be forced to kill me, it's your instinctive nature."

"I don't have to kill you," said Jeremy. "Do you think canned peach pie filling would be any good on pancakes? I should order peach pancakes."

"At least it won't be difficult for you—emotionally, I mean. It won't be as hard as it would have been, because I'm not your brother anymore."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm not with your sister, so we're not brothers. That will make it easier on you, when you have to kill me. To stop me from rampaging."

"We're brothers anyway. You don't get to stop being my big brother just because you broke up with Elena."

Damon was spinning the bottles of condiments in their rack. The little bottle of steak sauce had advertisements glued onto every side. It was square and wouldn't spin, so Damon picked it up, rotated it, dropped it, repeat. "If you say so."

"Look me in the eye and say it."

Damon looked at Jeremy and said, "We are still brothers."

_The End_


End file.
